


MODERN DEMOCRACIES 



■s 9 ^a o *^ 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
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MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

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TORONTO 



MODERN 
DEMOCRACIES 



BY 

JAMES BRYCE 

(VISCOUNT BRYCE) 

AUTHOR OF 
'THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE," "THE AMERICAN COMMONWEALTH," ETC. 



IN TWO VOLUMES 
VOL. I 



jQeto gorfe 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1921 

All rights reserved 



3 s 



Copyright, 1921, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1921 



1921 

©CU611495 



TO HIS FRIEND AND FELLOW-WORKER 

A. LAWRENCE LOWELL 

PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

TO WHOM ENGLISHMEN ARE INDEBTED 

FOR AN ADMIRABLY LUCID AND EXACT DESCRIPTION 

OF THEIR GOVERNMENT IN ITS THEORY AND PRACTICE 



PREFACE 

Many years ago, at a time when schemes of political re- 
form were being copiously discussed in England, mostly on 
general principles, but also with references, usually vague 
and disconnected, to history and to events happening in other 
countries, it occurred to me that something might be done 
to provide a solid basis for argument and judgment by ex- 
amining a certain number of popular governments in their 
actual working, comparing them with one another, and setting 
forth the various merits and defects which belonged to each. 
As I could not find that any such comparative study had been 
undertaken, I formed the idea of attempting it, and besides 
visiting Switzerland and other parts of Europe, betook my- 
self to the United States and Canada, to Spanish America 
and Australia and New Zealand, in search of materials, com- 
pleting these journeys shortly before the War of 1914 broke 
out. The undertaking proved longer and more toilsome than 
had been expected; and frequent interruptions due to the 
War have delayed the publication of the book until now, 
when in some countries conditions are no longer what they 
were when I studied them eight or ten years ago. This fact, 
however, though it needs to be mentioned, makes less differ- 
ence than might be supposed, because the conditions that have 
existed in those countries, and especially in Erance, the 
United States, and Australia, from 1914 to 1920 have been 
so far abnormal that conclusions could not well be drawn 
from them, and it seems safer to go back to the earlier and 
more typical days. Neither is it necessary for the purpose 
here in view to bring the record of events in each country up 
to date ; for it is not current politics but democracy as a form 
of government that I seek to describe. Events that happened 
ten years ago may be for this particular purpose just as in- 
structive as if they were happening to-day. 

The term Democracy has in recent years been loosely used 
to denote sometimes a state of society, sometimes a state of 



viii MODERN DEMOCRACIES 

mind, sometimes a quality in manners. It has oe en- 

crusted with all sorts of associations attractive or repulsive, 
ethical or poetical, or even religious. Bnt Democracy really 
means nothing more nor less than the rule of the whole people 
expressing their sovereign will by their votes. It shows 
different features in different countries, because the char. 
and habits of peoples are different: and these features are 
part of the history of each particular country. But it also 
shows some features which arc everywhere similar, beca us e 
due to the fact that supreme power rests with the voting 
multitude. It is of the Form of Government as i Form of 
Government — that is to say, of the features which democ- 
racies have in common — that this book treats, describing 
the phenomena as they appear in their daily working to an 
observer who is living in the midst of them and watching 
them, as one standing in ■ great factory sees the play and 
hears the clang of the machinery all around him. The 

actual factfl are what I wish to describe, and i* as if 

uothing could be simpler, for they arc all around us. Bui 

the facts are obscured to most people by the half-as-imilated 
ideas and BOnorOUS Of seductive phrases that till the air; and 
few realize exactly what are the realities beneath the phrases. 

To those persons wh<>, as poHtunans, ox journalists, or other- 
wise, have been u inside politics," the realities of their own 

country are familiar, and this familiarity enables such 
experts to get a fair [ mptC B Si OB of the facts in Other Coun- 
tries. But I Is large paitS Of every public that may 

be sail 1 which the cynical old statesman in Disraeli'i novel 
CotUarini Ft laid to his ardent sen who wished to get 

away from wordfl to ides i ideas are correct ones, and 

what are correct do one can tain; but with Wordfl we 

govern men." 

The book is not meant to propound theories. Novelties 
are not possible in a subject the literature of which b 
with Plato and Aristotle and ha- heen enriched by thousands 
of pens since their day. What I desire is, QOi to impress 
upon my readers views of my Own, but to supply them with 
facts, and (so far as I can) with explanations of facts on 
which they can reflect and from which they can draw their 
own conclusions. 

I am not sufficiently enamoured of my own opinions to 



PREFACE ix 

k to propagate them, and have sought to repress the pes- 
simism of experience, for it is not really helpful by way of 
warning to the younger generation, whatever relief its 
expression may give to the reminiscent mind. The saddest 
memories of political life are of moments at which one had 
to stand by when golden opportunities were being lost, to 
see the wrong thing done when it would have been easy to do 
the right thing. Bui this observation was made by a Persian 
to a Greek at a dinner-party, the night before the battle of 
Plataea twenty-four centuries ago, and the world has never- 
theless made some advances since then. 

Though 1 have written the book chiefly from personal 
observations made in the countries visited, there are of 
course many treatises to which I should gladly have referred, 
were it not that the number to be cited would be bo large as 

to perplex rather than help the reader who is not a Specialist, 
while the specialist would not need them. My greatest 
difficulty lias heen that of compression. In order to keep 
the hook within reasonable limits I have had to turn reluc- 
tantly away from many seductive by-paths, from history, 
from forms of political theory, — such as those of the concep- 
tion of the State and the nature of Sovereignty, — from 
constitutional and legal questions, and above all from eco- 
nomic topics and those schemes of social reconstruction which 

have been coming to the front in nearly every country — 
matters which now excite the keenest interest and are the 
battleground of current politic-. Though frequently com- 
pelled to mention such schemes I have abstained from any 
expressions of opinion, not merely for the sake of avoiding 
controversy, but because it seems to me, after a long life 
spent in study — and study means unlearning as well as 
learning — to be a student's first duty to retain an open 
mind upon subjects he has not found time to probe to the 
bottom. Even when one thinks a view unsound or a scheme 
unworkable, one must regard all honest efforts to improve 
this unsatisfactory world with a sympathy which recognizes 
how many things need to be changed, and how many doc- 
trines once held irrefragable need to be modified in the light 
of supervenient facts. What we want to-day is a better 
comprehension by each side in economic controversies of the 
attitude and arguments of the other. Reconcilements are 



x MODERN DEMOCRACIES 

not always possible, but comprehension and appreciation 
should be possible. 

The absorption of men's minds with ideas and schemes of 
social reconstruction has diverted attention from those prob- 
lems of free government which occupied men's minds when 
the flood-tide of democracy was rising seventy or eighty 
years ago; and it has sometimes seemed to me in writing 
this book that it was being addressed rather to the last than 
to the present generation. That generation busied itself with 
institutions; this generation is bent rather upon the purposes 
which institutions may be made to servo. Nevertheless the 
study of institutions has not 1< importance. Let us 

think of the difference it would have made to Europe if the 
countries engaged in the Great War had in 191 1 been all of 
them, as some of them were, oligarchies or autocracies; or if 
all of them had been, as some were, democracies. Or let us 
think of what may be the results within the next thirty ; 
of setting up democracies in oountries that have heretofore 
formed part of the Russian and Anstro-Hungarian "Mon- 
archies; or (to take a still in- • 1 i nir case) of trying the 
experiment of popular government in India, in China, in 
Russia, in Egypt) in Persia, in the Philippine Inlands. If 
any of the bold plans of social reconstruction QO* in the aii- 
are attempted in practice they will apply new tests to demo- 
cratic principles and inevitably modify their working. 
There is still plenty of room f«»r ation, plenty of fact- 
to be observed and of thinking to be done. The material* 

are always growing. Every generalization now made ii only 

provisional, and will have to be some day qualified: every 

book that is written will before long be OUt of date, except 
as a record of what were deemed to he salient phenomena at 
the time when it. was written. Bach of US who write- 

describes the progress mankind was making with if 

ments in government ai he saw them; each hands OH the 
torch to his successor, and the succession is infinite, for the 
experiments are never completed. 

It is, I hope, needless for me to disclaim any intention to 
serve any cause or party, for a man must have profited 
little by his experience of political life if he is not heartily 
glad to be rid of the reticences which a party system imposes 
and free to state with equal candour both sides of every 



PREFACE xi 

case. This is what I have tried to do; and where it has 
been harder to obtain information on a controversial issue 
from one side than from the other I have stated that to be so, 
and gone no further in recording a conclusion than the 
evidence seemed to warrant. 

My cordial thanks are due to a few English friends whose 
views and criticisms have aided me, and to many friends in 
France and Switzerland, the United States and Canada, 
Australia and New Zealand, who have been kind enough to 
read through the proofs relating to the country to which 
each of them respectively belongB and have favoured me with 
their comments. The list of these friends is Long, and their 
names would carry weight; but as their comments were 
given in confidence, and I alone am responsible for errors of 
new and fact — errors which I cannot hope to have 
avoided — I do not nana' those friends, contenting myself 
with this most grateful acknowledgment of help without 
which I should not have ventured into so wide a field. 

BRYCE. 

( 'hrishrxis I. 



CONTENTS 

VOL. 1 

TART I 

CONSIDERATIONS APPLICABLE TO 
DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT IX GENERAL 

CHAPTBl PAGE 

I Intbodi ( tori 

II The Method of Enquiry 13 

III The Di.iimtion or Dbhooraoi 20 

IV The Historical Evolution of Demoobaot . . . 24 

V The ThEOBETIOAI Foi NDAX1DN8 OF DEMOCRACY . 43 

VI LIBERTY 51 

VII E4QI ai.ii I GO 

VI1L Democracy am) Education 70 

IX DEMO! i:\( v AM) RELIGION 80 

X The Press in a Democracy 92 

XI Party Ill 

XII Local Self-Government 129 

XIII Traditions 134 

XIV The People 143 

XV Public Opinio* 151 

PART II 

SOME DEMOCRACIES IN THEIR WORKING 

XVI The Republics of Antiquity : Athens .... 165 
XVII The Republics of Spanish America .... 187 

FRANCE 

XVni Land and History 208 

XIX The Frame of Government: President and 

Senate 223 

XX The Chamber of Deputies 240 

XXI Cabinet Ministers and Local Party Organi- 
zations 261 

xiii 



XIV 



MODERN DEMOCRACIES 



CHAPTER PAGE 

XXII Judicial and Civil Admin istration i_'Tl 

XXin Local Government 

XXIV Public Opinion 

XXV The Tone of Public Life 

XXVI What Democracy has done for France . . 309 

SWITZERLAND 

XXVII The People and their Hbtosy 

XXVIII Political Institutions 

XXIX Direct Legislation by the People : I i u 

AND INITIATIVE 

XXX Political Parties 4os 

XXXI Public Opinion 

XXXII Concluding BxTLBOTlQirfl 01 Swi- PdUTl U In- 
stitutions 



XXXIII 

XXXIV 

XXXV 

XXXVI 

XXXVII 



CANADA 
The Country and tin . 455 



THE People and the PlBim 
Working of the QOYWrMOT . 

The Action of IYin.i< <)pini«»\ . 
General Review <-e (\v\dia\ PoUTl B 



177 
487 



end oi vol. i 



ERRATA 

VOL. I 

Page 250, line 80. Th€ -alary of ■ MWatOf and that of ft deputy has, 

•inoe tl a- printed, been reieed to 27*000 Emnca ■ year. 

Page 278, last lint' hut OBfl of t i • - 1 . • , aftrr "jury" ins.rt t In* words "indeed 

IK. lit'.'' 

Page 201, line 0, for ' 1862" rend "1851." 

Page 802, line it. for "<>f a" rend "ehoeen by." 

Page 814, line 88, for "Lonii \\v rend "Lonii \iv " 



PAST I 

CONSIDERATIONS APPLICABLE TO 
DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT 

IX (1KXKUAL 



VOL. I 



CHAPTEB I 



l.\l BODUC1 "i;v 



A « i \ 1 1 i: j ago there was in the Old World only one tiny 
Bpol in which the working of democracy could be studied. 
A few of the ancient rural cantons of Switzerland had 
recovered their freedom after the fall of Napoleon, and 
were governing themselves as they bad done from the earlier 
Middle Ages, bul they wen small and their conditions 

peculiar to furnish instruction to larger communities or 

throw much liidit OE popular ir«»vrnmii'iit in general. N" 

where else in Europe did the people rule. Britain enjoyed 
far wider freedom than any part of the European Continent, 
hut her local as well as central government wafl -till oligar- 
chic When the American Republic began its national life 
with the t'rauiiuL r and adoption of the Federal Constitution 
in 17 n 7 v '.', the only materials which history furnished to 
it- founders were those which the republics of antiquity had 
provided, bo it was to these materials that both those founders 
and the men of the first French Revolution constantly re 
ourred for examples to be followed or avoided. Nobody 
Bince Plutarch bad gathered the pattern- of republican civic 
virtue which orators like Vergniaud had to invoke, Nobody 
Bince Aristotle bad treated of constitutions on the line- Alex- 
ander Hamilton desired for hi- guidance. 

Willi 17 s '. 1 the world passed into a new phase, hut the 
ten years that followed were for France years of revolution, 

in which democracy had no chance of approving its quality. 

It was only in the United States that popular governments 
could be profitably studied, and when Tocqueville studied 
them in 1827 they had scarcely begun to show some of their 
most characteristic feature-. 

Within the hundred years that now lie behind us what 
changes have passed upon the world! Xearly all the mon- 
archies of the Old World have been turned into democracies. 
The States of the American Union have grown from thirteen 



II 



4 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

to forty-eight. While twenty new republics have sprang up 
in the Western hemisphere, five new democracies have 
developed out of colonies within the British dominions. 
There are now more than one hundred representative il 
blies at work all over the earth legislating For self-governing 
communities; and the proceedings of nearly all of thes< 
recorded in the press. Thus the materials for a study of 
free governments have boon and are accumulating so fast 
that the most diligent student cam p pace with the 

course of political evolution in more than a few out of these 
many countries. 

A not less significant change d the universal ac- 

ceptance of democracy as the normal and natural form of 
government. Seventy y, | those who are now old 

can well remember, the approaching rise of the masses to 
power was regarded bj the educated classes of Europe as a 
menace to order an d prosperity. Tl word Democracy 

awakened dislike or fear. WOW it il I word of pi 

Popular power is wel died, worshipped. Tin 

whom it repels or alarms rarely avow their sentiment 

have aim. d to study : mens beeaa now 

seem to have become part of the established order of thi 
The old question, — What is the beet form rnment I 

is almost obsolete 1" tre of b been 

shifting. Tt is not the nature of d< ij, nor even the 

variety of the shapes it wear-, t! | i day in debate, hut 

rather the purposes to which it may he turned, t! 

and economic changes it may be need to I its uni- 

versal acceptance is not i tribute to the smoothness <>f its 
working, for discontent rife, while in some 

countries the revolutionary spirit is passing into forms here- 
tofore undreamt of, our of which loom-, up 

spectre. The time seems to have arrived when the actuali- 
ties of democratic government, in it- di forms, should 
be investigated, and when the conditions most favourable to 
its success should receive more attention than student 
distinguished from politicians, have been bestowing upon 
them. Now that the abundant and ever-increasing data 

facilitate a critical study, it SO happens that current, ev 
supply new reasons why such a study should he under! 
forthwith. Some of these reasons . mention. 



CHAP. I 



INTRODUCTORY 



We have just seen four great empires in Europe — as 
well as a fifth in Asia — all ruled by ancient dynasties, 
crash to the ground, and we see efforts made to build up out 
of the ruins new States, each of which is enacting for itself 
a democratic constitution. 

We see backward populations, to which the very concep- 
tion of political freedom had been unknown, summoned to 
attempt the tremendous task of creating Belf-governing insti- 
tution-. China, India, and Russia contain, taken together, 
one half or more the population of the globe, so the problem 
of providing \r<'<- government for diem is the Largest problem 
statesmanship has ever had to boIvi 

The uew functions thai are being thrust upon govern- 

DientS in every civilized country, make it more than ever 

necessary that their machinery should he so constructed as 
to discharge th< se functions efficiently and in full accord with 

the popular wish. 

And lastly, we he more advanced peoples, 

dissatisfied with the forms of government which they have 

inherited from the past) now hent on experiments for mak- 
ing their own control more direct and effective. Since de- 
mocracy, though assumed to he the only rightful kind of 
government, has, in its representative form, failed to fulfil 
the hop are ago, new remedies are sought to 

cure the defects experience has revealed. 

These are among t] our time which suggest that 

a comprehensive survey of popular governments as a whole 
may now have a value for practical politicians as well as an 
interest for scientific students. Any such survey must needs 
be imperfect, — indeed at best provisional — for the data 
are too vast to be collected, digested, and explained by any 
one man, or even by a group of men working on the same 
lines. Yet a sort of voyage of discovery among the materials 
most easily available, may serve to indicate the chief prob- 
lems to be solved. It is on such a voyage that I ask the 
reader to accompany me in this book. Its aim is to pre- 
sent a general view of the phenomena hitherto observed in 
governments of a popular type, showing what are the prin- 
cipal forms that type has taken, the tendencies each form has 
developed, the progress achieved in creating institutional 
machinery, and, above all — for this is the ultimate test of 



6 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

excellence — what democracy has accomplished or failed to 
accomplish, as compared with other kinds of government, 
for the well-being of each people. Two methods of handling 
the subject present themselves. One, that which most of my 
predecessors in this field have adopted, is to describe in a 
systematic way the features of democratic government in 
general, using the facts of particular democracies only by 
way of illustrating the general principle- expounded. This 
method, scientifically irreproachable, rang the risk of becom- 
ing dry or even dull, for the reader remains in the region of 
bloodless abstractions. The other method, commended by 
the examples of ^Montesquieu and Tooqneville, keeps him in 
closer touch with the actual concrete phenomena of human 
society, making it easier for him to follow reasonings and 
appreciate criticisms, because these are more closely asso- 
ciated in memory with the facts that BU them. These 
considerations have led me. instead of attempting t<> pn 
a systematic account of Democracy in it- general features 
and principles, to select for treatment various countries in 
which democracy exists, describing the institutions of 
in their theory and their practic to -how under what 
economic and social conditions each form works, and with 
what results for nood or evil. These conditions BO dif- 
ferentiate the working that no single democracy can he called 
typical. A certain number must be examined in order to 
determine what features they have in common. Only when 
this has been done can we distinguish that which in each 
of them is accidental from what Beems essential, character- 
istic of tin 1 nature and normal tendencies of democracy as a 
particular form of government. 

Six countries have been selected for treatment: two old 
European State-, Prance and Switzerland; two newer States 
in the Western hemisphere, the American Union and Can- 
ada; and two in the Southern hemisphere, Australia and 
New Zealand. France has been the powerful protagonist of 
free government on the European Continent ami has pro 
foundly affected political thought, not only by her example 
but by a line of writers from the great names of Montesquieu 
and Eousseau down to Tooqneville, Taine, Boutmy, and 
others of our own time. In Switzerland there were seen the 
earliest beginnings of self-government among simple peasant 



CHAP. I 



INTRODUCTORY 



folk. The rural communities of the Alpine cantons, appear- 
ing in the thirteenth century like tiny flowers beside the 
rills of melting snow, have expanded by many additions into 
a Federal republic which is the unique example of a gov- 
ernment both conservative and absolutely popular. Among 
the large democracies the United States is the oldest, and 
contains many small democracies in its vast body. Its Fed- 
eral Constitution, the best constructed of all such instru- 
ments and that tested by the longest experience, has been 
a pattern which many ether republics have imitated. Can- 
ada, Australia, and Xew Zealand, whose institutions have 

been modelled on those of England, are the youngest of tin 4 

democracies, and the two latter of these have gone further 

;iikI faster than any others in extending the sphere of State 

action into new fields. To the comparatively full account 

<>)' thee aix, I have prefixed ;i shorter treatment of two 

other groups. The city republics of ancient Greece cannot 
he omitted from any general survey. Their brief hut bril- 
lianl life furnished the earliest examples of what men can 

achieve in the taak of managing their affairs by popular as- 
semblies and the literature which records and criticizes their 
efforts is one of the world'- most precious possessions, des- 
tined to retain its value so long as civilized society exists. 
The republics of what is called u Latin America," all of 
them Spanish except Portuguese-speaking Brazil and French- 
speaking Haiti, musl also find a place, for they have a double 
interest. Their earlier history shows the results of planting 
free representative institutions in a soil not fitted to receive 
the seed of liberty, while the progress which some few of 
them have been recently making towards settled order shows 
also that with an improvement in economic and intellectual 
conditions that seed may spring up and begin to flourish. 
Only one of the great modern democracies has been 
omitted. The United Kingdom, though in form a monarchy, 
has a government in some respects more democratic than is 
that of France, and the process by which it passed from an 
oligarchy to a democracy through four constitutional changes 
in 1832, 1868, 1885, and 1918 is full of instruction for the 
historian. But no citizen of Britain, and certainly no cit- 
izen who has himself taken a part in politics as a member, 
during forty years, of legislatures and cabinets, can expect 



8 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pact i 

to be credited with impartiality, however earnestly he may 
strive to be impartial. I have therefore been reluctantly 
obliged to leave this branch of the subject to some one, pref- 
erably some American or French scholar, who is not af- 
fected by a like disability. 

These accounts of governments in the concrete constitute 
the centre and core of the book, and may, it is hoped, be 
serviceable to those who are interested in the practical rather 
than the theoretical aspects of politics. I have prefixed to 
them some introductory chapters analyzing the ideas or doc- 
trines whereon popular government < rest) tracing the process 
by which they have grown, and indicating the conditions 
under which they are now worked; and have also called at- 
tention to certain generally operative factors which the 
reader must keep in sight while studying the features of the 
several communities examined. Such are die in- 

fluences of education, of religion, of the new-paper press, of 
tradition, of party spirit and party organization, and of 
public opinion as a ruling force. These preliminary 6C 
form Part L, and Part IT. is occupied by the descriptions 
of the six actual modern democratic governments already 
enumerated. These descriptions d<> not enter into the de- 
tails either of the constitutional mechanism or of the | 
ministrative organization of each country dealt with, but 
dwell upon those features only of its institution BO in 

actual working, which belong to and illustrate their demo 
cratic character. 

To these last-mentioned chapters which describe the work- 
ing of actual democratic governments, past and present, there 
are subjoined, in Tart III., other chapters classifying and 
comparing the phenomena which the examination of these 
governments reveals, and setting forth the main conclusions 
to which they point. 

The book thus consists of three parts. Part I. contains 
preliminary observations applicable to popular governments 
in general. Part II. describes certain selectee] popular 
ernments, giving an outline of their respective institutions 
and explaining how these institutions work in practice. 
Part III. summarizes and digests the facts set forth in Tart 
II. and indicates certain conclusions which may be drawn 
from them as to the merits and defects of democratic insti- 



CHAP. I 



INTRODUCTORY 



tutions in general, the changes through which these institu- 
tions have been passing, the new problems that are beginning 
to emerge, and the possibility of other changes in the future. 

Unlike to one another as are many of the phenomena 
which the governments to be described present, we shall find 
in them resemblances sufficient to enable us to draw certain 
inferences true of democratic governments in general. 
These inferences will help ns to estimate the comparative 
merits of the various forms democracy has taken, and to ap- 
prove some institutions as more likely than others to pro- 
mote the common welfare. 

There is a sense in which every conclusion reached re- 
garding men in society may seem to be provisional, because 
though human nature has been always in many points the 
same, it has shown itself in other respects BO variable that 
we cannot be sure it may not change in some which we have 
been wont to deem permanent. But since that possibility 
will be equally true a century hence, it does not dissuade us 
from doing the best we now ean to reach conclusions suf- 
ficiently probable to make them applicable to existing prob- 
lems. New as these problems seem, experience does more 
than speculation to help towards a solution. 

Most of what has been written on democracy has been 
written with a bias, and much also with a view to some 
particular country assumed as typical, the facts there ob- 
served having been made the basis for conclusions favourable 
or unfavourable to popular governments in general. This 
remark does not apply to Aristotle, for he draws his con- 
clusions from studying a large number of concrete instances, 
and though he passes judgment, he does so with cold detach- 
ment. Neither does it apply to Tocqueville who, while con- 
fining his study to one country, examines it in the temper 
of a philosopher and discriminates between phenomena pecul- 
iar to America, and those which he finds traceable to demo- 
cratic sentiment or democratic institutions in general. The 
example of these illustrious forerunners prescribes to the 
modern student the method of enquiry he should apply. He 
must beware of assuming facts observed in the case of one or 
two or three popular governments to be present in others, 
must rid himself of all prejudices, must strive where he 
notes differences to discover their origin, and take no proposi- 



10 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

tion to be generally true until he has traced it to a source 
common to all the cases examined, that source lying in the 
tendencies of human nature. But of this, and especially of 
the comparative method of study, something will be said in 
the chapter next following. 

As the tendencies of human nature are the permanent basis 
of study which gives to the subject called Political Science 
whatever scientific quality it posa - 3, 80 the practical value 
of that science consists in tracing and determining the rela- 
tion of these tendencies to the institutions which men have 
created for guiding their life in a community. Certain in- 
stitutions have been found by experience T.> work better than 
others; i.e. they give more Bcope to (he wholesome tenden- 
cies, and curb the pernicious tendencies. Such institutions 
have also a retroactive actios upon those who live under 
them. Helping men to goodwill, self-restraint, intelligent 
co-operation, they form what we call a solid political char- 
acter, temperate and law-abiding, preferring peaceful to vio- 
lent means for the settlement of controversies. Where, on 
the other hand, institutions have been ill-constructed, or too 
frequently changed '<> exert this educative influence, men 
make under them little progress towards a steady and har- 
monious common life. To find the type of institutions best 

calculated to help tin- In Her and repress tli.- pernicious tend- 
encies is the task of the philosophic enquirer, who laya the 
foundations upon which the legislator builds. A people 
through which <rood sense and self-control are widely dif- 
fused is itself the best philosopher and the he-t legislator, as 

is seen in the hist« >r\ of Rome and in that of England. It 

was to the sound judgment and practical quality in these 
two peoples that the excellence of their respective cau- 
tions and systems of law was due. not that in either people 
wise men were exceptionally numerous, but that both were 
able to recognize wisdom when they saw it, and willingly 
followed the leaders who possessed it. 

Taking politics (so far as it is a science) to be an ex- 
perimental science, I have Bought to make this book a record 
of efforts made and resultfl achieved. But it so happens 
that at this very moment, there are everywhere calls for new 
departures in politics, the success or failure of which our 



chap, i INTRODUCTORY 11 

existing data do not enable us to predict, because the neces- 
sary experiments have not yet been tried. 

The civilized peoples seem to be passing into an unpre- 
dicted phase of thought and life. Many voices are raised 
demanding a fundamental reconstruction of governments 
which shall enable them to undertake much that has been 
hitherto left to the action of individuals, while others pro- 
pose an extinction of private property complete enough to 
make the community the only owner of lands and goods, 
and therewith the authority which shall prescribe to each 
of its members what work he shall do and what recompense 

he shall receive to satisfy his own needs. Here are issues 
of supreme and far-reaching importance. " How," it may 
be asked, "can any one write about democracy without 
treating of the new purposes which democracy is to be made 
to serve? Look at Germany and France, England and 
America. Look al Australia and New Zealand, where demo- 
cratic institutions are being harnessed to the chariot of so- 
cialism in a constitutional way. Above all, look at Russia, 
shaken by ; in earthquake which has destroyed all the institu- 
tions it found existing." My answer to this question is that 
the attempts heretofore made in the direction of State So- 
cialism or Communism have been too few and too short- 
lived to supply materials for forecasting the consequences 
of such changes as those now proposed. What history tells 
us of the relation which the permanent tendencies of human 
nature bear to political institutions, is not sufficient for 
guidance in this unexplored field of governmental action. 
We are driven to speculation and conjecture. Now the ma- 
terials for conjecture will have to be drawn, not from a study 
of institutions which were framed with a view to other aims, 
but mainly from a study of human nature itself, i.e. from 
psychology and ethics as well as from economics. Being, 
however, here concerned with political institutions as they 
have been and as they now are, I am dispensed from enter- 
ing the limitless region of ethical and economic speculation. 
We see long dim vistas stretching in many directions through 
the forest, but of none can we descry the end. Thus, even 
were I more competent than I feel myself to be, I should 
leave to psychologists and economists any examination of the 



12 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pact i 

theories and projects that belong to Collectivism or Socialism 
or Communism. 1 A treatment of them would swell this 
book to twice or thrice its size, and would lead me into a 
sphere of enquiry where controversies burn with a fierce 
flame. 

The ancient world, having tried many experiments in free 
government, relapsed wearily after their failure into an ac- 
ceptance of monarchy and turned its mind quite away from 
political questions. More than a thousand years elapsed be- 
fore this long sleep was broken. The modern world did not 
occupy itself seriously with the subject nor make any per- 
sistent efforts to win an ordered freedom till the sixteenth 
century. Before us in the twenl Leth a vast and tempting field 
stands open, a field ever widening as new States arise and 
old States pass into new phases of life. More workers are 
wanted in that field. Regarding the psychology of men in 
politics, the behaviour of crowds, the forms in which ambi- 
tion and greed appear, much that was said long ago by his- 
torians and moralists is familiar, and need not be now re- 
peated. But the working of institutions and laws, the forms 
in which they best secure liberty and order, and enable the 
people to find the men fit to be trusted with power — these 
need to be more fully investigated by a study of what has 
proved in practice to work well or ill. It is Facts that are 
needed: Facts, Facts, Facts. When facts have been sup- 
plied, each of us can try to reason from them. The in- 
vestigators who are called on to supply them may have their 
sense of the duty owed to truth quickened by knowing that 
their work, carefully and honestly done, without fear or 
favour, will be profitable to all free peoples, and most so to 
those who are now seeking to enlarge the functions of gov- 
ernment. The heavier are the duties thrown on the State, 
the greater is the need for providing it with the most efficient 
machinery through which the people can exercise their con- 
trol. 

1 The subject is, however, touched upon in a chapter of Part III, for 
the sake of indicating the effects on political institutions which a system 
of State Socialism might produce. 



CHAPTER II 

THE METHOD OF ENQUIRY 

The contrast between the rapid progress made during the 
last two centuries in the study of external nature and the 
comparatively slow progress made in the determination of 
the laws or principles discoverable in the phenomena of 
human society is usually explained by the remark that in 
the former success was attained by discarding abstract no- 
tions and setting to work to observe facts, whereas in the 
latter men have continued to start from assumptions and 
run riot in speculations. As respects politics, this explana- 
tion, though it has some force, does not cover the whole case. 
The greatest minds that have occupied themselves with polit- 
ical enquiries have set out from the observation of such facts 
as were accessible to them, and have drawn from those facts 
their philosophical conclusions. Even Plato, the first 
thinker on the subject whose writings have reached us, and 
one whose power of abstract thinking has never been sur- 
passed, formed his view of democracy from the phenomena 
of Athenian civic life as he saw them. His disciple Aristotle 
does the same, in a more precise and less imaginative way. 
So after him did Cicero, with a genuine interest, but no 
great creative power; so too did, after a long interval, Ma- 
chiavelli and Montesquieu and Burke and others down to 
Tocqueville and Taine and Roscher. 

The fundamental difference between the investigation of 
external nature and that of human affairs lies in the char- 
acter of the facts to be observed. The phenomena with 
which the chemist or physicist deals — and this is for most 
purposes true of biological phenomena also — are, and so far 
as our imperfect knowledge goes, always have been, now and 
at all times, everywhere identical. Oxygen and sulphur be- 
have in the same way in Europe and in Australia and in 
Sirius. But the phenomena of an election are not the same 
in Bern and in Buenos Aires, though we may call the thing 

13 



14 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

by the same name; nor were they the same in Bern two cen- 
turies ago, or in Buenos Aires twenty year- ago, as they are 
now. The substances with which the chemist deals can be 
weighed and measured, the feelings and acts of men can- 
not. Experiments can be tried in pi vet and over 
again till a conclusive result is reached, bur that which we 
call an experiment in politics can never be repeated because 
the conditions can never be exactly reproduced, as Heraclitus 
say? that one cannot step twice into the same river. Pre- 
diction in phy>ie> may be certain: in politics it can at 
be no more than probable If vagueness and doubt sur- 
round nearly every theory OT doctrine in the field of politics, 
that happens not bo much because political philoi have 
been careless in ascertaining facts, but rather because they 

were apt to be unduly affected by the particular facts that 

were under their eyes. However widely and carefully the 
materials may be gathered, their character makes it impos- 
sible that politics should ever become a science in the 
in which mechanics or chemistry or botanj is a . Ts 

there then no way of applying exact methods to the snl 
and of reaching some more general and more positive 
elusions than ha\ secured acceptance 1 Are the mate- 

rials to be studied, viz. the acts and thoughts of men, their 
habit- and Institutions, incapable of wientific treatment be- 
cause too various and changeful I 

The answer is that there is in the phenomena of human 
society one "Constant," one element or factor which is 
practically always the same, and there f ore the f all 

the so-called " Social Scion Phis is Unman Nature 

itself. All fairly normal mm have like passions and d< 

They are Btirred by like motives, they think upon similar 
lines. When they have reached the stage of civilization in 

which arts and letter- have developed, and political institu- 
tions have grown up. reason has become so far the guide of 
conduct that sequences in their action can he established and 
their behaviour under given conditions can to some extent 

be foretold. Human nature i< that basic and ever-pn 
element in the endless tlnx <»f social and political phenomena 

which enables general principles to be determined. And 
though the action of individual men may often he doubtful, 
the action of a hundred or a thousand men all subjected to 



chap, n THE METHOD OF ENQUIRY 15 

the same influences at the same time may be much more 
predictable, because in a Large number the idiosyncrasies of 
individuals are likely to be eliminated or evened out. Pol- 
itics accordingly has its roots in Psychology, the study (in 
their actuality) of the mental habits and volitional proclivi- 
ties of mankind. The knowledge it gives is the knowledge 
most needed in life, and our life is chiefly spent in acquiring 
it. But we are here concerned only with the political side 
of man, and have to enquire how to study that particular 
department of his individual and collective life. 

Two other differences between the Natural and the Hu- 
man Sciences need only a word or two. The terms used in 
the latter lack the precision which belongs to those used in 

the former. They are not truly technical, for they do not 

always mean the Bame thing to all who age them. Such 

words as " aristocracy/ 5 -> prerogative," " liberty," "oligar- 
chy." -- faction," " caucus/' even "constitution" convey dif- 
ferent meanings to different persons. The terms used in 

politics have, moreover, contracted associations, attractive or 
repellent, a- the case may he. to different persons. They 
evoke feeling. An investigator occupied in the interpreta- 
tion of history is exposed to < motional intluences such as do 
not affect the enquirer in a laboratory. Nobody has either 
love or hatred for the hydrocarbons; nobody who strikes a 
rock with his hammer to ascertain whether it contains a 
particular fossil has anything but knowledge to gain by the 
discovery. The only chemical elements that have ever at- 
tracted love or inspired enthusiasm are gold and silver; nor 
is it chemists whom such enthusiasm has affected. 

Human affairs, however, touch and move us in many ways, 
through our interest, through our associations of education, 
of political party, of religious belief, of philosophical doc- 
trine. Nihil humani nobis alienum. We are so influenced, 
consciously or unconsciously, in our reading and thinking, 
by our likes and dislikes, that we look for the facts we desire 
to find and neglect or minimize those which are unwelcome. 
The facts are so abundant that it is always possible to find 
the former, and so obscure that it is no less easy to under- 
value the latter. 

If vigorous minds who have addressed themselves to the 
study of governments have, although they used the facts 



16 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

they saw, often differed in their conclusions and failed in 
their forecasts, this is because few subjects of study have 
suffered so much from prejudice, partisanship, and the habit 
of hasty inference from a few data. Even large-visioned 
and thoughtful men have not escaped one particular kind of 
prepossession. Such men are naturally the keenest in noting 
and condemning the faults of whatever system of govern- 
ment they happen to live under. Nearly every political 
philosopher has like Hobbes, Locke, and Burke written under 
the influence of the events of his own time. Philosophers 
who are also reformers are led by their ardour to overesti- 
mate the beneficial effects of a change, because they forget 
that the faults they denounce, being rooted in human weak- 
ness, may emerge afresh in other forms. Struck by the 
evils they see, they neglect those from which they have not 
suffered. One must always discount the sanguine radicalism 
of a thinker, who, like Mazzini, lived beneath the shadow of 
a despotism, and the conservatism, or austerity, of one who 
lived, like Plato, aniid-t. the hustle and din of a democracy. 

Human nature being accordingly a factor sufficiently con- 
stant to enable certain laws of its working to be ascertained, 
though with no such precision and no such power of predic- 
tion as is possible in the physical sc: bow is it to bo 
studied? 

The best way to get a genuine and exact first-hand knowl- 
edge of the data is to mix in practical politics. In such a 
country as France or tl ipablo man can, in 

a dozen years, acquire a c ompr ehension of the realities of 

popular government ampler and more delicate than any 
which hooks supply. II'- loams the habits and propensities 
of the average citizen as a sailor learns the winds and cur- 
rents of the ocean ho has to navigate, what pleases or repels 
the voter, his illusions and his prejudices, the sort of per- 
sonality that, is fascinating, the sort of offence that is not for- 
given, how confidence La won orlost, the kind of argument 
that tells on the hotter or the meaner spirits. Such a man 
forms, perhaps without knowing it, a body of maxims or 
rules by which he sails his craft, and steers, if he bo a leader, 
the vessel of his party. Still ampler are the opportunit 
which the member of an Assembly has for studying his col- 
leagues. This is the best kind of knowledge; though some 



chap, ii THE METHOD OF ENQUIRY 17 

of it is profitable only for the particular country in which 
it has been acquired, and might be misleading in another 
country with a different national character and a different 
set of ideas and catchwords. Many maxims fit for Paris 
might be unfit for Philadelphia, but some might not. It is 
the best kind because it is first-hand, but as its possessor sel- 
dom commits it to paper, and may indeed not be qualified 
to do so, the historian or philosopher must go for his mate- 
rials to such records as debates, pamphlets, the files of news- 
papers and magazines, doing his best to feel through words 
the form and pressure of the facts. When he extends his 
enquiry to other countries than his own, the abundance of 
materials becomes bewildering, because few books have been 
written which bring together the most important facts so as 
to provide that in format ion regarding the conditions of those 
countries which he needs in order to use the materials aright. 
These «lat;i, however, do not, carry US the whole way 
towards a comprehension of democratic government in gen- 
eral. The student must try to put life and blood into his- 
torical records by what he has learnt of political human na- 
ture in watching the movements of his own time. He must 
think of the Past with the same keenness of interest as if it 
were the Present, and of the Present with the same coolness 
of reflection as if it were the Past. The English and the 
Americans of the eighteenth century were different from the 
men of to-day, so free government was a different thing in 
their hands. There are, moreover, differences in place as 
well as in time. Political habits and tendencies are not the 
same thing in England as in France or in Switzerland, or 
even in Australia. The field of observation must be en- 
larged to take in the phenomena of all the countries where 
the people rule. The fundamentals of human nature, pres- 
ent everywhere, are in each country modified by the in- 
fluences of race, of external conditions, such as climate and 
the occupations that arise from the physical resources of the 
country. Next come the historical antecedents which have 
given, or withheld, experience in self-government, have 
formed traditions of independence or submission, have cre- 
ated institutions which themselves in turn have moulded the 
minds and shaped the ideals of the nations. 

This mode of investigation is known as the Comparative 
vol. i o 



18 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS past i 

Method. That which entitles it to be called scientific is that 
it reaches general conclusions by tracing similar results to 
similar causes, eliminating those disturbing influences which, 
present in one country and absent in another, make the re- 
sults in the examined cases different in some points while 
similar in others. When by this method of comparison the 
differences between the working of democratic government 
in one country and another have been noted, the local or 
special conditions, physical or racial or economic, will be 
examined so as to determine whether it is in them that the 
source of these differences is to be found. If not in them, 
then we must turn to the institutions, and try to discover 
which of those that exist in popular governments have 
worked best. All are so far similar in that they are meant 
to enable the people to rule, but some seek this end in one 
way, some in another, each having its merits, each its de- 
fects. When allowance has been made for the different con- 
ditions under which each acts, it will be possible to pro- 
nounce, upon the balance of considerations, which form offers 
the best prospect of success, After the differences between 
one popular government and another have been accounted 
for, the points of similarity which remain will be what one 
may call democratic human nature, viz. the normal or perma- 
nent habits and tendencies of citizens in a democracy and of 
a democratic community as a whole. This is what we set 
out to discover. The enquiry, if properly conducted, will 
have taught us what are the various aberrations from the 
ideally besl to which popular government is by its very na- 
ture liable. 

It is this method thai 1 have sought to apply in inves- 
tigating the phenomena each particular government shows, 
so as to indicate wherein they differ from or agree with those 
found in other governments. Where the phenomena point 
to one and the same conclusion, we are on firm ground, and 
can claim to have discovered a principle fit to be applied. 
Firm ground is to be found in those permanent tendencies 
of mankind which we learn from history, i.e. from the rec- 
ord of observations made during many centuries in many 
peoples, living in diverse environments, physical and his- 
torical. The tendencies themselves take slightly diverse 
forms in different races or peoples, and the strength of each 



chap, ii THE METHOD OF ENQUIRY 19 

relatively to the others varies. These diversities must be 
noted and allowed for; but enough identity remains to en- 
able definite conclusions of general validity to be attained. 

So expressed and considered in their application to prac- 
tice, these conclusions have a real value, not only to the stu- 
dent but also to the statesman. Many an error might have 
been avoided had a body of sound maxims been present to 
the minds of constitution makers and statesmen; not that 
such maxims could be used as necessarily fit for the particu- 
lar case, but that he who had them before him would be led 
to weigh considerations and beware of dangers which might 
otherwise have escaped him. Some one has said, There is 
nothing so useless as a general maxim. That is so only if 
yo'i do not know how to use it. He who would use it well 
must always think of the instances on which it rests and of 
tin* instruction these may bo made to yield. Its use is to 
call attention. It is not a prescription but a signpost, or 
perhaps a danger signal 

The conclusions obtained by those methods of investiga- 
tion are less capable of direct application to practice than 
are those of the exact sciences. However true as general 
propositions, they are subject to many qualifications when 
applied to any given case, and must be expressed in guarded 
terms. The reader who may be disposed to complain of the 
qualified and tentative terms in which I shall be obliged to 
express the results which a study of the phenomena has 
suggested will, I hope, pardon me when he remembers that 
although it is well to be definite and positive in statement, 
it is still better to be accurate. I cannot hope to have always 
attained accuracy, but it is accuracy above everything else 
that I have aimed at. 



CHAPTER III 

THE DEFINITION OF DEMOCRACY 

The word Democracy has been used ever since the time 
of Herodotus x to denote that form of government in which 
the ruling power of a State is Legally vested, not in any 
particular class or classes, bat in the members of the com- 
munity as a whole. This means, in communities which act 
by voting, that rule belongs to the majority, as no other 
method has been found for determining peaceably and legally 
what is to be deemed the will of a community which is not 
unanimous. Usage has made this the accepted sense of the 
term, and usage is the safest guide in the employment of 
words. 

Democracy, as the role of the Many, was by the Greeks 

opposed to Monarchy, which is the rule of One, and to Oli- 
garchy, which is the rule of the Few, privileged 
either by birth or by property. Thus it came to he taken as 
denoting in practice that form i rnment in which the 
poorer class, always the more numerous, did in fact rule; and 
the term Demos was often used to describe not the whole 

people hut, that particular class as distinguished from the 
wealthier and much smaller class. Moderns sometimes also 

use it thus to describe what we call u the masses " In 
tradistinction to M the classes." But it is better to employ 

the word as meaning neither more nOT LeSfl than the Kule of 

the Majority, the u classes and masses " of the whole people 
being taken together. 

So far there is little disagreement as to the t the 

word. But when we conic to apply this, or indeed any broad 
and simple definition, toooncrett many questions i 

What is meant by the term "political community n 1 Does 
it include all the inhabitants of a given area or those only 
who possess full civic rights, the so-called "qualified citi- 

i Book VI., ch. 43. 
20 



chap, m DEFINITION OF DEMOCKACY 21 

zens " ? Can a community such as South Carolina, or the 
Transvaal, in which the majority of the inhabitants, because 
not of the white race, are excluded from the electoral suf- 
frage, be deemed a democracy in respect of its vesting polit- 
ical power in the majority of qualified citizens, the " quali- 
fied " being all or nearly all white ? Is the name to be 
applied equally to Portugal and Belgium, in which women do 
not vote, and to Norway and Germany, in which they do? 
Could anybody deny it to France merely because she does 
not grant the suffrage to women? Or if the electoral suf- 
frage, instead of being possessed by all the adult, or adult 
mal(\ citizens, is restricted to those who can read and write, 
or to those who possess some amount of property, or pay some 
direct tax, however small, does that community thereby cease 
to be a democracy ? 

So again, what difference LB made by such limitations on 
the power of the majority as a Constitution may impose? 
There are communities in which, though universal suffrage 
prevails, the power of the voters is fettered in its action by 
the rights reserved to a king or to a non-elective Upper 
House. Such was the German Empire, such was the Aus- 
trian Monarchy, such are some of the monarchies that still 
remain in Europe. Even in Britain and in Canada, a cer- 
tain, though now very slender, measure of authority has been 
left to Second Chambers. In all the last mentioned cases 
must we not consider not only who possess the right of voting, 
but how far that right carries with it a full control of the 
machinery of government? Was Germany, for instance, a 
democracy in 1913 because the Reichstag was elected by man- 
hood suffrage? 

Another class of cases presents another difficulty. There 
are countries in which the Constitution has a popular qual- 
ity in respect of its form, but in which the mass of the peo- 
ple do not in fact exercise the powers they possess on paper. 
This may be because they are too ignorant or too indifferent 
to vote, or because actual supremacy belongs to the man or 
group in control of the government through a control of 
the army. Such are most of the so-called republics of Cen- 
tral and South America. Such have been, at particular mo- 
ments, some of the new kingdoms of South-Eastern Europe, 
where the bulk of the population has not yet learnt how to 



22 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

exercise the political rights which the Constitution gives. 
Bulgaria and Greece were nominally democratic in 1915, but 
the king of the former carried the people into the Great War. 
as the ally of Germany, against their wish, and the king of 
the latter would have succeeded in doing the same thing hut 
for the fact that the Allied fleets had Athena under their 
guns. 

All these things make a difference to the truly popular 
character of a government. It is the facts that matter, not 
the name. People used to confound — some persons in some 
countries still confound — a Republic with a Democracy, and 
suppose that a government in which one person is the titular 
and permanent head of the State cannot be a gov e rnment by 
the people. It ought not u^ be i ry nowadays to point 

out that there arc plenty of republic* which arc not democ- 
racies, and Borne monarchies, like those <>f Britain and Nor- 
way, which are. I might multiply instance-, hut it is not 
worth while. Why spend time on what is a qnestion of 

words? No <»ne has propo u nded a formula which will i 
(^■cvy case, because there are governments which are "on 

the line." tOO popular to he called oligarchies, and -carcelv 
popular enough to be called democracies. Hut though we 

cannot define either Oligarchy or Democracy, we can usually 

know either the one or the oilier when we Bee it. Where the 
will of the whole people prevails in all important Dial 

even if it has some retarding intlin I overcome, 

legally required to act (>>v some pm in some specially 

provided manner, that may be called a Democracy. In this 
hook T use the word in it- old and Btrici sense, a- denoting a 

government in which the will of the majority of qualified cit- 
izens rules, taking the qualified oituens I itute the 
great bulk of the inhabitants, Bay, roughly, at least three- 
fourths, BO that the physical forc.« of the citizen- coincides 

(broadly speaking) with their voting power. Using this 

we may apply the name to the Tinted Kingdom and 

the British Belf-governing Dominions, 1 to France, Italy, 

Portugal, Belgium, Holland. Denmark, Sweden, Xorwav, 
Greece, the United States, Argentina, and possibly Chile and 
TTruguay. Of some of the newer European States it I 

1 Subject, as respects the Union of South Africa sad it- OOimpoail 
States, to the remark made above regarding persons of colour. 



CHAP. Ill 



DEFINITION OF DEMOCRACY 23 



soon to speak, and whatever we may call the republics of 
Central America and the Caribbean Sea, they are not democ- 
racies. 

Although the words " democracy " and " democratic " de- 
note nothing more than a particular form of government, 
they liave, particularly in the United States, Canada, and 
Australia, acquired attractive associations of a social and 
indeed almost of a moral character. The adjective is used 
to describe ;i person of a simple and friendly spirit and ge- 
nial manners, " a i:<»u\ mixer," one who, whatever his wealth 
or status, makes no assumption of superiority, and carefully 
keeps himself 0!D the level of his poorer or less eminent 
neighbours. I have heard a monarch described as "a dem- 
ocratic king." 5 Democracy is supposed to be the product 
and the guardian both of Equality and of Liberty, being so 
consecrated by its relation-hip to both these precious pos- 
sessions as to be almost above criticism. Historically no 
doubl the three have been intimately connected, yet they are 
separable in theory and have sometimes been separated in 

practice, ;i- will appear from the two following chapters. 

i I haw rr:id American writers who hold that the ownership of "pub- 
lic utilities'' is what makes a community democratic. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF DEMOCRA.OT 

The facts and forces that have created Popular Qovern- 
ment are partly of the Practical and partly of the Theoretic 
order. These two f< ive frequently worked together; 

hut whereas the action of the former has been almost con- 
tinuous, it is only at a few epochs thai abstract doctrines 
have exerted power. It is convenient to consider each order 
apart, so I propose in this chapter to pass in rapid survey 
the salient features of the historical process by which gov- 
ernments of the popular type have grown up. Seine light 
may thus be thrown on the question whether the trend 
towards democracy, now widely visible, is a natural trend, 

due to a general law I pi-ogre*.;. If thai or in 

other words, if Causes similar to these which have in many 

countries substituted the rale of the Many for the rule of the 
One or the Pew arc. because natural, likely to remain 0] 
tive in the future, democracy may be expected to live on 
where it now exists and to I to other countr • If 

on the other hand the-e can- me of them, are local or 

transient, such an anticipation will be less warranted. This 

enquiry will lead US to note in e;ich ease whether the change 

which transferred power from the Few to the tiany sprang 
from a desire to he ri«l of grievai ributed to misgoi 

ment or was created by a theoretical belief that government 

belonged of right to the eiti. a whole. In the former 

alternative the popular interest might flag when the griev- 
ances had hecn removed, in the latter only when the results 

of democratic government had been disappointing. 

When the curtain rises QD that Kastern world in which 
civilization first appeared, kingship is found e:, Q all 

considerable states, and chieftainship in tribes not ye( de- 
veloped into This condition lasted On everywhere in 

Asia with no legal limitations on the monarch until .lapan 

24 



chap, iv HISTORICAL EVOLUTION 25 

framed her present Constitution in 1890. Selfish or slug- 
gish rulers were accepted as part of the order of nature, and 
when, now and then, under a strong despot like Saladin or 
Akbar, there was better justice, or under a prudent despot 
less risk of foreign invasion, these brighter intervals were 
remembered as the peasant remembers an exceptionally good 
harvest. The monarch was more or less restrained by cus- 
tom and by the fear of provoking general discontent. Insur- 
rections due to some special act of tyranny or some outrage 
on religious feeling occasionally overthrow a sovereign or 
even a dynasty, but no one thought <>f changing the form of 

government) for in nothing is mankind less inventive and 

more the slave of custom than in matters of social structure. 

Large movements towards change were, moreover, difficult, 
because each Local community bad little to do with others, 
and those who were intellectually qualified to load had sel- 
dom any other claim to leadership. 

Iii early Europe there were no great monarchies like those 
of Assyria or Egypt or Persia. M«n were mostly organized 
in tribes or clans, under chiefs, one of whom was pre-emi- 
nent, and sometimes a large group «>f tribes formed a nation 

under a king of ancient lineage (perhaps, like the Swedish 

STnglings, of supposed divine origin) whom the chiefs fol- 
lowed in war. 

The Celtic peoples of Gaul and those of the British Isles, 
as also the Celtiberians of Spain, were thus organized in 

clans, with a kin<r at the head of a clan group, such as the 
king of the Picts in North-Eastern and the king of the Scots 
in Western Caledonia. In Germany kingship based on 
birth was modified by the habit of following in war leaders 
of eminent valour, 1 and the freemen were, as in Homeric 
Greece, accustomed to meet in public assembly to discuss 
common affairs. It was only among the Greeks, Italians, 
and Phoenicians that city life grew up, and the city organ- 
ization usually began by being tribal. A few families pre- 
dominated, while the heads of the older clans held power 
over the meaner class of citizens, these being often strangers 
who had gathered into the cities from outside. 

From the king, for in most of these cities the government 
seems to have been at first monarchical, power passed after 
i Tacitus, Oermama. 



26 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

a while to the heads of the great families. Their arrogance 
and their oppression of the poorer citizens provoked risings. 
which in many places ended, after a period of turmoil and 
seditions, by overthrowing the oligarchy and vesting power 
in the bulk of the well-to-do citizens, and ultimately (in some 
cities) in all the free voters. The earl: a towards de- 

mocracy came not from any doctrine that the people have 
a right to rule, but from the feeling that an end must In' 
put to lawless oppression by a privileged <• 

Equality of laws (imvopfa) was in Greece the watchword 
of the revolutions, whether violent «>r peaceable, which 
broughi about these reforms. Theoretic justifications of the 
rule of the multitude came later, when politicians sought to 
win favour by sweeping away the remains otf aristocratic 
government ami by tilling the people with a sense of their 
own virtue and wisdom The breaking down of the old 
oligarchy at Rome was due to the growth of a large popula- 
tion outside the old tribal system who w re \>>v a long 

time denied full equality <»f civil rights and subjected to 

harsh treatment which their incomplete political equality 

Ilted them from re-training. Thes< complaints, rein- 
forced by other grievances relating to the stringent law of 

debt an<l to the management of the public land, led to a 
series of -tniL r L r le^. which ended in strengthening the popular 
element in the Roman Constitution. Bui Rome never be- 
came more than partially democratic, and theori tiding 
the natural rights of the citizen played no significant part 

in Roman history, the Italians having a less speculative turn 
of mind than the Greeks. Needless to say that the Mights 

of Man. a- Man. wer.- q< -v.-r heard of, for slavery, the slavery 

of men of the same Colour as their matters and often of 

equal intelligence, was an accepted institution in all coun- 
tries. Such development of popular or constitutional gov- 
ernment as we see in the Hellenic and Italic peoplei of an- 
tiquity was due to the pn f actual grievances far more 
than to any theori irding the nature of government and 

the claims <>f the people. 

With the fall of the lounan republic the rule of the people 

came to an end in the ancient world. Local self-government 
went on for many generations in the cities, but in an oligar- 



chap, iv HISTORICAL EVOLUTION 27 

chic form, and it, too, ultimately died out. For nearly 4 " 
fifteen centuries, from the days of Augustus till the Turks 
captured Constantinople, there was never among the Romans 
in the Eastern Empire, civilized as they were, any more than 
there had been in the West till the imperial power ceased 
at Rome in the fifth century, a serious attempt either to 
restore free government, or even to devise a regular constitu- 
tional method for choosing the autocratic head of the State. 
Few things in history arc more remarkable than the total 
eclipse of all political though* and total abandonment of all 
efforts to improve political conditions in a highly educated 
and intelligent population such as were the inhabitants of 
the Western half of the Empire till the establishment there 
of barbarian kingdoms in the fifth and sixth centuries, and 

such as were the 1 1 el leii< r-Romans round the ZEgeaD Sea till 

many centuries later. The subjects of the Eastern Roman 
Empire were interested in letters and learning, in law and in 
art, and above all, after the rise of Christianity, in religion. 

lull though the political and historical literature of the 

classical ages had been preserved in Constantinople Long after 
they had fallen out of knowledge in the West, nothing of a 

political kind was produced in the field of theory, nothing 
«»f ;i political kind attempted in the field of practice. M"eu 

were tired of politics. Free government had been tried, and 
had to all appearance failed. Despotic monarchies every- 
where held the tield. The few active minds cared for other 
things, or perhaps despaired. The masses were indifferent, 

and would not have listened. When a rising occurred it was 
hecause men desired good government, not self-government. 
Who can say that what has happened once may not happen 
again ? 

The progress of popular government in the modern world 
from its ohscure Italian beginnings in the eleventh century 
a.d. may be referred to four causes : 

The influence of religious ideas. 

Discontent with royal or oligarchic misgovernment and 
consequent efforts at reform. 

Social and political conditions favouring equality. 

Abstract theory. 

It would be impossible to sketch the operation of these 



28 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 



causes in all modern countries, so I confine myself to those 
few in which democracy has now gone furthest, treating each 
of these in the briefest way. 

In England there are three marked stages in the advance 
from the old feudal monarchy, as it stood at the accession 
of the Tudor kings, to popular government. The first is 
marked by the struggle which began between king and Par- 
liament under Charles I. and ended with the Revolution Set- 
tlement of 1688-S9. 

This was a straggle primarily against ecclesiastical op- 
pression, secondarily against civil misgovernment, and in 
particular against the exercise of certain royal prerogatives 
deemed to infringe civil liberty, such as the claim of the 
king to levy taxes and L88U6 executive ordinances without the 
consent of Parliament. The struggle, conducted in the 
name of the ancient rights of the subject, occupied more 
than half a century, and brought about not merely a red 
nition of these rights, but also an extension of them sufficient 
to make the House of Commons thenceforth the predominant 
power in the State. It was prompted by a spirit of 
sistance to actual oppressions rather than by any desire to 
assert the abstract, right to self-government. Yet in the 
course of it questions of a theoretical nature did twice 
emerge. 

Among the Puritans who formed the bulk of the parlia- 
mentary party in (he civil War, the Endependents were the 
most consistent and most, energetic element In their view 
all Christians were, as Christians, free and equal, and there- 
fore entitled to a voice in the affairs of a Christian State as 
w r ell as of a Christian congregation. After the Restoration 
of 1660 this doctrine fell into the background. But at the 
end of the period ( in HJN!)) John Locke, the most eminent 
English thinker of his time, published B treatise on Govern- 
ment, upholding the principles of the Whig party. As that 
book had its influence then and thereafter on the Whigs, so 
the seed of the Independents' doctrine, carried across the 
ocean, fell on congenial ground in the minds of the New 
England Puritans, and there sprang up, two generations 
later, in a plentiful harvest 

For a hundred years after the Revolution Settlement the 
English acquiesced in the political system then established. 



chap, iv HISTOKICAL EVOLUTION 29 

It was an oligarchy of great landowners, qualified, however, 
by the still considerable influence of the Crown and also by 
the power which the people enjoyed of asserting their wishes 
in the election of members for the counties and for a few 
large towns. The smaller boroughs, from which came a 
large part of the House of Commons, were mostly owned by 
the oligarchs, and through them the oligarchy usually got 
its way. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the 
faults of this system, as well as that increase in the royal 
power which George the Third seemed to be effecting, began 
to create a demand for reform, but the outbreak of the 
French Revolution and the long war which followed inter- 
rupted all such schemes. Forty years later, when the horror 
inspired by the excesses of the Revolution had melted away, 
the call for reform was again heard, and was now the louder 
because there was much Buffering and discontent among the 
labouring class in town and country. The grievances com- 
plained of were not so galling as th.ee which had aroused the 
Puritans against Charles the First. But in times of enlight- 
enment abuses are resented as grievances. Men of intellect 
and education saw more clearly than their fathers had done 
the defects in the laws of the country and the monstrous 
anomalies of the electoral system. Reinforced in its later 
stage by the excitement which the revolution that overthrew 
Charles X. in France had evoked, the movement grew fast, 
and triumphed in the Reform Act of L832. The contest 
was almost bloodless. There were riots, but no civil war. 
The chief motive force behind the Whig leaders was the 
sense among the whole people that there were grave evils 
which could be cured only by a more truly representative 
House of Commons. But there was also a feeling, stronger 
than had been discernible since the seventeenth century, that 
the power possessed by the landowning class and by the rich 
in general belonged of right to the bulk of the nation. 

The effect of the Act, which reduced the suffrage but left 
the great majority of the manual labourers still unenfran- 
chised, was to transfer voting power to the middle classes 
and the upper section of the hand-workers, but the hold of 
the wealthy, both landowners and others, upon the offices of 
State, remained, though beginning by degrees to loosen. So 
things stood for thirty-five years. 



30 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

The process of change by which Great Britain became 
a democracy was resumed in 1S6T by an Act which lowered 
the electoral franchise in the boroughs, was continued in 
1885 by another Act, which lowered it in counties also, and 
was ended by an Act of 19 IS which enfranchised virtually 
the whole adult population, women as well as men. All 
these measures were accompanied by redistributions of seats 
which have now made representation almost exactly propor- 
tioned to population. Thus the United Kingdom has now 
universal suffrage, and in almost every constituency the 
labouring class compose the majority, usually a very large 
majority. 

For none of these three Acts was there any strong popular 

demand. In l v ' a more or less academic politi- 

cian- advocated parliamentary re f orm on the ground that 
it would enable questions of soda] reform to be more 
promptly and boldly dealt with. 1 Others, led by two 
orators, Mr. Bright and Mr. Gladstone, urged that the wider 
the basis of r< presentation, the stronger would be the fabric 
of the Constitution and the more contented the people. But 
there was no real excitement, such as had forced the ked 

of L832 upon a reluctant parliament, nor were there any 

violent demonstrations through the country such as had 
been c< mmon in the days of the Chartist agitation in l 
l v . L ' The young reformers of L866, quorum pars parvo fui, 
were rather disappointed at what Beemed the apathy of the 
masses, and some of the Lancashire working-class Leaders 
told me that tin red only a feeble backing. Th( 

i Two volume! published In i v, '<7 and entitled Vssoyi on Reform end 
Question* for a Btformed Pofiiomtmi by these sendemic writer! nuke 
curious reading to day. 

2 Tho overturning Mn : the railing! In Hyde Park In London 

by a crowd assembled to hold I reform meeting was mads much of at 
the time In the British press sad treated in the foreign pn 
prelude to a revolution. Bui having been close to the raiiim.'* when 
they fell, I can say that the tall was hall an accident and the crowd 

Brfectly good-humoured sad not at all excited. Led by i r< 
able old revieing barrister, Mr. Edmond Bealee, If. A., and composed 
chiefly <>f person! drawn by curiosity, it wai so dsnse that Ite pn 
on the railings, which were much lower and weaker than those which 
Dolose the park, mads them give way, lifting ae they sank tho 
•tone basse in which they were fixed. Ihe front rank. «rho were 
squeezed against them, gleefully proceeded to shake them. Down they 

went, and the people jumped OVOf them into til! park amid gSttersJ 
laughter. 



chap, iv HISTORICAL EVOLUTION 31 

planation of the ease with which the Bill of 1867 was 
carried is to be found partly in the cheery optimism of those 
days, when few people feared the results of change (for 
Socialism had not yet appeared), partly in the habit the 
two great parties were beginning to form of competing for 
popular favour by putting forth alluring political pro- 
grammes. To advocate the extension of the suffrage was 
easy, to oppose it invidious as indicating distrust; and while 
the Liberal party thought it had something to gain by re- 
form, the shrewd old leader of the Tory party saw he had 
little to lose. Neither perceived that in the long run both 
would Buffer, for this result was not disclosed till the gen- 
eral election of 1905 brought into being a new Labour party, 
which drew voters away from both Liberals and Tories, and 
now threatens the working of the t iine-honoured two-party 
system. 

The Acts of 1884-85, which extended the franchise to 
the agricultural labourers and miners in the counties and 
redistributed Beats, passed even more easily, and ultimately 
by a compromise between the two parties. They were the 
logical consequence of the Act of 18G7, and the fears for- 
merly entertained by the richer classes had been removed 
by the electoral victory they won in L874. The only heat 
that arose was when the House of Lords had threatened to 
defeat the extension of the suffrage by a side wind. The 
Act of ll»l^ was passed during the Great War by a Coali- 
tion Ministry with scarcely any opposition, and little no- 
ticed by the people, whose thoughts were concentrated on 
the battle-front. Never was a momentous change made so 
quietly. 

Throughout this long march from feudal monarchy to 
extreme democracy which occupied three centuries, the 
masses of the people, whether peasants in the country or 
artisans in the towns, never (except in 1832) clamoured for 
political power. The ancient system was gradually broken 
down by the action of a part of the upper class aided by the 
bulk of the middle classes. The really active forces were, 
in the earlier stages of the march, the pressure of religious 
and civil tyranny which could be removed only by setting 
Parliament above the Crown, while in the later stages the 
operative causes were : First, the upward economic progress 



32 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

of the middle and humbler classes, which made it seem 
unfair to keep them in tutelage; secondly, the wish to root 
out the abuses incident to old-fashioned oligarchies and create 
a more efficient administration; and thirdly, the tendency 
of the two political parties to make political capital for 
themselves by proposals likely to attract both the unenfran- 
chised masses and those who, sympathizing with the masses, 
thought they would be better cared for if they received full 
civic rights. Abstract principles, theories of political equal- 
ity as prescribed by natural justice, played some part only at 
four epochs: during the Civil War; at the Revolution of 
1688; during the years when the contagion of the French 
Revolutionary spirit of 17 v '.' was active; and lastly, during 
the Chartist period, when there was much suiTering and con- 
sequent discontent among the working class. That discon- 
tent had virtually subsided before the Act of 1867 and did 
not contribute to i:- ]»;i-si nir. With the expanding manu- 
facturing activity that set in from 1848 onwards, and be- 
fore Socialism had made any converts, or any distinctive 
Labour party ha<l hem thought of, the nation, complacent 
in the assurano iwing power, of commercial prosperity, 

and of the stability of it- institutions, glided cheerfully 
down a smooth current, scarcely noting how fast the current 
ran, into a democratic DO which, virtually unchecked 

by constitutional safeguards, now leaves its fortunes to tho 
impulses of a single ( ham] 

From Britain we may turn to trace the swifter growth 
of democracy in those branches of the English people which 

established themselves beyond the & 

The North American colonies of England were settled 
by persons belonging (except to some extent in Virginia) 

to the middle and humbler classes, among whom there was at 
first little difference in wealth, and not very much in rank. 
Social and economic conditions creating social equality made 
political equality ultimately inevitable, The electoral suf- 
frage was for a time restricted by property qualifications, 
but after the Revolution which severed the colonics from the 
British Crown, these restrictions were removed, .-lowly, but 
with little controversy, in all the States of the Union. By 
1830 manhood suffrage had come to prevail (subject to some 
few exceptions) over the country. But while tho Northern 



CHAP, rv 



HISTORICAL EVOLUTION 



and Western States were democracies, the Southern States 
were, until slavery was extinguished, practically oligarchical, 
for in them there had grown up an aristocracy of slavehold- 
ing planters, who controlled the government, the landless 
whites following their lead. This condition of things dis- 
appeared after the Civil War, which broke up the aristocracy 
of large landholders, and now the Southern States are as 
purely democratic as the Northern. Yet one difference re- 
mains. In nearly all of these States the large majority of 
negroes are, despite the provisions of the Federal Constitu- 
tion, excluded from the electoral franchise by various devices 
introduced into the State Constitutions. 

As the United States were predestined to democracy by 
the conditions in which they began their career as an inde- 
pendent nation, so the Bwiftn888 and completeness with which 
the rule of the multitude was adopted were due to their an- 
tecedent history and to the circumstances of their separation 
from Britain. The principles of the English Puritans had 
formed the minds of the New Englanders. The practice of 
self-government in small areas had made the citizens accus- 
tomed to it in South as well as North. Independence had 
been proclaimed and the Revolutionary War waged in the 
name of abstract principles, and the doctrine of man's nat- 
ural rights glorified. Over no other people of Teutonic 
stock has this doctrine exerted so great an influence. 

The Australasian colonies, Australia, Tasmania, and New 
Zealand, have had a shorter and more placid career. In 
them even more markedly than in North America, the set- 
tlers came from the poorer and middle classes of Britain, 
carrying with them no distinctions of rank, and living on 
terms of social equality with one another. When the time 
came, in the middle of the nineteenth century, for granting 
representative institutions and responsible self-government, 
the British Parliament constructed these institutions on the 
British model as it then stood. Once established, however, 
the institutions showed themselves more democratic in their 
working than those of that model, because the English aris- 
tocratic traditions and the influence of landholders and rich 
men, then still potent in the mother country, were absent. 
Such property qualifications as at first limited the right of 
voting were soon swept away by the colonial legislatures. 

VOL. I D 



34 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pajtt i 

Manhood suffrage was, after about forty years, followed 
by universal suffrage at the instance of some few women 
who asked for it. In neither case was there serious oppo- 
sition, and therefore little need to invoke general principles 
against opposition. It seemed the obvious thing. People 
said. Why not? If the working men want it. if the women 
want it, let them have it. 

Australia and New Zealand are the countries in which 
democracy has gone furthest in practice, and they are also 
those in which it has owed least to theoretic arguments. 
There were not (except as regarded land settlement) either 
grievances which it was needed to remove, or occasions for 
invoking ab.-traet principles. 

The history of Canada and that «»f Smith Africa have 
both of them been too chequered, and the racial conditions 

which affect their politics too complicated, to admit o( being 
treated with the brevity Deeded in this chapter. Bo far as 

relates to the causes which created popular government, 
it may suffice to Bay that the circumstances of Canada (and 

to a Leaa degree, those of Sooth Africa) resembled those ^( 
Australia in reaped ol the general equality of wealth and 
education among the people, so it was natural that the Brit- 
ish Parliament should there also reproduce by it- grant ^i 
responsible government the self-governing institution- ol 
the mother country. In Canada these have worked ont 
in b sense somewhat more democratic than they were do- 
in-- in Great Britain before L918, but less so than in 

Australasia. In Smith Africa the existeiic. of i lai 

coloured population baa prevented the grant of universal 
suffrage. 

Returning to Europe, one may begin with the land in 

the mountain r ol which the government of the ]•< 

pie by the people first established itself, and from which 
the accents of liberty were heard in Continental Kurope 
before England's example became known th< 

Two voices are there: "ne is of the Sea; 
One of the Mountains, cadi i mighty voice. 

Early in the fourteenth century several small communi- 
ties of peasants on the shores of the Lake of Luzern, own- 
ing their fields and enjoying in common the woods and 



chap, iv HISTORICAL EVOLUTION 35 

pastures, rose in arms against the exactions of their feudal 
superior the Count of Hapsburg, who happened at the time 
to be also Emperor. Attempts made to subdue them were 
foiled by their valour and by the defensibility of the valleys 
in which they dwelt. Other Alpine communities followed 
their example, and were equally successful. None of them 
meant to disavow allegiance to the Empire, hut merely to 
repel the insolence and tyranny of the feudal magnates, and 
maintain thai local self-government which had been the 
ancient birthright of the freemen among many Teutonic 
lands, as in Frisia and in Norway, Presently they allied 
themselves with some of the neighbouring cities which had 
tin-own off the supremacy of their ecclesiastical or Becular 
lords. The cities were ruled by oligarchies; the rural can- 
tons continued to govern themselves by the whole body of 
freemen meeting in the primary assembly which debated 
and determined matters of common interest and chose the 
officials who had to manage currenl business. In this fed- 
eration democratic and oligarchic governments deliberated 
(through their delegates) and Fought side by side. There 

was nothing Surprising in BUch an alliance, for in old Swit- 
zerland Oligarchy and Democracy wen- Pacts, antinged by 

Doctrines. Nobody had thought ahont general principles of 

government. The rural democracies of dri, Schwytz, TJn- 
terwalden, and the Grey Leagues (Orisons) ruled the subject 
territories they had conquered on the Italian side of the 
Alps just as sternly as the oligarchies of Bern and Ziirich 
did theirs: the interest both had in holding down their re- 
spective subjects being indeed one of the bonds that held the 
Confederates together. 

The public meeting of freemen in the three Forest Can- 
tons, as also in Zug, Glarus, and Appenzell, was a survival 
from times before feudalism, almost before history, when 
each tiny community, isolated from all others, managed its 
own affairs. So little did any theories of equality and lib- 
erty influence their minds that they were in fact the most 
conservative of all Swiss. They did not admit newcomers 
to share in their civic rights. They detested the French 
revolutionaries so late as 1848, and being strong Catholics, 
they strove against the liberalism of industrial cities like 
Zurich. One contribution, however, was made by them to 



36 GENEEAL CONSIDERATIONS past i 

those democratic theories which they disliked. The city 
republic of Geneva, not yet a member of the Confederation, 
gave birth in 1712 to J. J. Rousseau, and it seems probable 
that it was the political arrangements of the old rural can- 
tons, directly governed by their own citizens, that sugg 
to him those doctrines which, announced in his Contrat 
Social, exercised an immense influence on men's minds in 
France and in Xorth America at a time critical for both 
countries. 

In 1796 the armies of revolutionary France shattered the 
Confederation, and out of the ruins there Riose a shortlived 
Helvetic Republic, in which the inhabitants of the subject 
territories were admitted to civic rights. After many con- 
flicts and changes, including a brief civil war in I s 17, 
Switzerland became, by the Constitutions of 1848 and 1874, 
a democratic Federal State, all the twenty-two component 
members of which are also dem< 

It was only in the latest phases i>( Swiss political develop- 
ment that abstract theory played a conspicuous part The 
ideas diffused by the French Revolution spread wide the 
faith in popular sovereignty now characteristic of the Swiss 
nation and have set their Btaxnp upon the present form i>( its 

institution-. They were unheard of in the earlier days, when 

the Swiss fought against the South German princes and after- 
wards against Charles the Bold of Burgundy. In ancient 
Greece the democratic cities and the oligarchic cities 

generally in opposition to one another. There were excep- 
tions, as when democratic Athens attacked the then demo- 
cratic Syracuse; but as a rule similarity in the form of 
ernment was a ground for friendly relation-. No tendency 
of this kind appeared among the Swiss. It d< to be 

noted that in the Middle Ages monarchy was always assumed 
tc be the normal, natural, and even divinely appointed form 
of government Until by the Peace of Westphalia (1648), 
the independence of the Swiss Confederation was recognized, 
all republics both north and south of the Alps were vaguely 
deemed to he under the suzerainty, nominal ;is it had become, 
of the Romano-Germanic Emperor. In the middle of the 
thirteenth century the people of Iceland, the one republic 
then existing in the world, were urged by the envoys of the 
king of ^Norway to place themselves under his sovereignty on 



chap, iv HISTOKICAL EVOLUTION 37 

the ground (inter alia) that everywhere else in the world 
monarchy held the field. 

Of France little need be said, because every one may be 
assumed to know the salient facts of her history since 1788. 
She is the capital instance of a nation in which abstract 
ideas have immense force, because in no other modern people 
are ideas so quickly irradiated by imagination and fired by 
emotion. Never did political theories attain such power and 
run so wild a course as in the years from 17S ( .) to 1794. We 
are so startled by the fervour with which they were held, and 
the absurd applications made of them, as sometimes to attrib- 
ute to them even more power than they really exerted over 
the course of events. The enthusiasts whom they spurred 
on, could not, gnat, as is the elan of enthusiasm, have de- 
stroyed the monarchy and the church with so little resistance 
had it not been for the existence of grievances which made 
the peasantry, except in parts of the West, welcome these 
sudden and sweeping changes. The oppressive exactions and 
odious privileges which exasperated the people, the contempt 
into which both the Court and the ecclesiastical system had 
fallen since the days of Louis XIV. and which was height- 
ened by the weakness of the unlucky king, had struck away 
the natural supports upon which government usually rests, 
so that little effort w T as needed to overthrow the tottering 
fabric. It was not so much the doctrines of Liberty and 
Equality with which the Convention hall resounded as the 
wish of the masses to better their condition and the desire 
of all classes but one to be rid of galling social privileges. 
When these things had been attained, the nation acquiesced 
for fourteen years in the rule of a military dictator, who gave 
them an efficient administration and as much prosperity as 
was compatible with heavy expenditure on war and a terrible 
toll of human lives. The later revolutions of 1830 and 1848 
and 1870 were far less violent, not merely because the en- 
thusiasms of 1789 had died out, but also from the absence 
of any such solid grievances as had existed under the ancien 
regime. 

All three revolutions were the work of the capital rather 
than of the nation, and how little the nation as a whole had 
been permeated by the passion for political equality was 
shown by the very limited suffrage that prevailed under the 



38 GEKERAL CONSIDERATIONS pakt i 

reign of Louis Philippe, and of which it was rather the edu- 
cated class than the excluded masses that complained, and by 
the long submission to the rule of Louis Napoleon, wL 
fall, when at last it came, came as the result of a foreign 
war. His government was costly and corrupt, but the coun- 
try was prosperous, and the ordinary citizen, though he did 
not respect his rulers, had few hardships affecting his daily 
life to lay to their charge. It is nevertheless true that a 
theoretical preference of republicanism to other forms of 
government waxed strong in France, and has now. i genera- 
tion haying grown up under it, drawn to its support the con- 
servative instincts <•!* the people, while the Bonapartean Em- 
pire was associated with military misfortunes and the I 
of territory. Sine- L848, and still more so since 1870, the 
old watchwords of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity have been, 
if not superseded, yel overlaid by new doctrines involving 
new contests of principle. Liberty, Le, popular representa- 
tive . eminent, is well established. Fraternity has be- 
come a mere phrase in the presence of a standing antagonism 
between the wage-en ruing class and the bourj Social 

and political equality have heen attained in so fnr IS the 

former can be attained while great differences of wealth ea 
The new doctrines and oew issues are economic rather than 
political. They point to the extinction of private property, 

the enjoyment of which was placed hy the men of 1 789 among 

Natural Rights; and those who - rt of this at h . 

suggest the absorption hy the State of the means <>f produc- 
tion and distribution. The arguments advance.] in support 

of these doctrines are rather economic than philosophical, and 
the controversy is carried on in the practical sphere, with the 
desire for Economic Equality as its motive force. In this 
Bense it may he said that abstract doctrines of Unman Rights 

figure Less in the conflicts of tO-day than in the generations 

that were fascinated hy Rousseau and Tom Paine. 

To this outline of the caUSCS which have in BOme countries 

created popular government, a few sentences may be added 
as to the causes which in «>ther countries retarded or arrested 
its growth. In Castile and Aragon, where in the later Mid- 
dle Ages the prospects of free constitutional development 
seemed bright, the wars with the Moors and the power of the 
Church impressed on the national mind hahits nnd tenden* 



chap, iv HISTORICAL EVOLUTION 39 

which allowed the Crown to draw all power to itself. In 
Hungary the Turkish domination, followed by that of the 
Bapsburgs, strong by their other dominions, gave the ancient 
constitution little chance. In Poland foreign wars and in- 
ternal dissensions weakened the country till it fell a prey to 
its neighbours. Of Holland and the Scandinavian king- 
doms it would be impossible to speak without a historical 
disquisition, while the republics of Spanish America, in 

which the extinction a century ago of the arbitrary rule of a 

distant mother country raised high hopes for freedom, will be 
dealt with in a later chapter. Hut of modern Germany Borne 
few words mil-! he said, because her recent history is in- 
structive. Upon educated men in the German State-, though 
less in Prussia than elsewhere, the principles of Hie French 
Revolution told powerfully. Qnhappily, they were speedily 
followed by the armies first of tin- French Republic and then 
of Napoleon, so national patriotism was forced to Bupporl tin 1 
sovereigns from whom it would otherwise have demanded 
constitutional freedom. When tin- War of Liberation was 
crowned with victory in L81 l, the reformers expected a granl 
of political rights, hut the sovereigns banded together in, or 
dependent upon, the Eoly Alliance, refused all concessions. 
Frightened for a time by the revolutionary movements of 
1848 \'K they soon regained control. The desire for polit- 
ical liberty, a thing unknown for centuries, had not irone 
deep among the people, and the grievances they had to com- 
plain of were teasing rather than wounding, so the forces 
of reaction continued to prevail till the Prussian Liberals 
began that fight against Bismarck which from 1862 till 1865 
seemed likely to establish the right of the legislature to finan- 
cial control. But in 1SG4 the successful war against Den- 
mark and in 1866 the successful war against Austria gave to 
the Crown and its audacious Minister an ascendancy which 
threw domestic issues into the background. In 1870 the 
tremendous victory over France, followed by the creation 
of national unity in the form of a German Empire, was 
taken as vindicating the policy of Bismarck, whose per- 
sistence in raising taxes without legislative sanction had given 
the Prussian army the military strength by which victory had 
been won. Though the Keichstag, a representative chamber 
for the Empire, was created in 1871 on the basis of universal 



40 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

suffrage, it failed to secure the control of the people over the 
executive. An assembly elected on a comparatively narrow 
franchise but with wide powers does more to make a govern- 
ment popular than one elected on a wider franchise with 
narrower powers. The cause of real constitutional freedom 
advanced no further in the Empire or in Prussia. The spirit 
of the old Liberalism withered, and when a strong opposi- 
tion after a time grew up, it was a Socialistic opposition, 
whose aims were economic at least as much as political. 

From 1814 to 1870 the German Liberals had striven for 
national unity and for a constitutional freedom like that of 
England. When the former had been attained, and its at- 
tainment, with the prestige of an unexampled triumph, had 
made Germany the greatest military power of the Old World, 
the interest in freedom declined. Commercial and industrial 
development became the supreme aim. 'Flic government, 
with its highly trained bureaucracy, helped the richer and 

middle classes towards p rosperity in many ways, bo they over- 
looked its defects in recognition o( its services, and identified 
themselves with a system their fathers would have con- 
demned. The Soda] Democratic party was less friendly. 

Its growth alarmed the ( lovernment. But it did not push 
opposition to extremes, believing material progress to be 

bound up with national strength and administrative activity. 
The professional el ■ dally the clergy, the teach- 

ers, and nearly all the men of science and learning, were de- 
voted to a system under which science and learning were 

promoted and honoured. Moreover, the habit of obedience 
was in all classes deep-seated. Germany's strength depended 

on the army. A Prussian was a soldier first and a citizen 
afterwards. Patriotic ardour, the pride of nationality, loy- 
alty to the dynasty under which the country had grown great, 
the passion for industrial development and commercial pre- 
dominance — all these things combined to make the people 
as a whole acquiesce in the refusal of electoral reforms in 
Prussia and of that ultimate control of foreign policy ;md 
power of dismissing ministers that are enjoyed by every other 
people which counts itself free. The most educated and 
thoughtful part of the nation, from which many leaders of re- 
form had come in earlier days, showed little wish to advance 
further in the path of constitutional freedom. This is the 



chap, iv HISTORICAL EVOLUTION 41 

most illuminative instance of a movement towards democracy 
arrested in its course which modern times have furnished. 

Of the Great War and the changes it has wrought in Ger- 
many the time has not yet come to speak. 

The conclusion to which this brief summary seems to point 
is that while the movement which has in many countries 
transferred power from the Few to the Many has sprung 
partly from the pressure of actual grievances and partly 
from the abstract doctrine of Natural Rights, the latter has 
played a smaller part than its earlier apostles expected. No- 
where have the masses of the people shown a keen or abiding 
desire for political power. Looking back over the course of 
history, we modems are surprised that our forefathers did 
not, so soon as they thought about government at all, per- 
ceive that few persons are fit to be trusted with irresponsible 
power, and that men know better than their rulers can be 
expected to know for them what their needs and wishes are. 
How came it that what are now taken as obvious truths were 
not recognized, or if recognized, were not forthwith put in 
practice? Why were ills long borne which an application of 
these now almost axiomatic principles would have removed ? 

I have tried in later chapters to suggest answers to these 
questions. Meantime, let us recognize that neither the con- 
viction that power is better entrusted to the people than to a 
ruling One or Few, nor the desire of the average man to 
share in the government of his own community, has in fact 
been a strong force inducing political change. Popular gov- 
ernment has been usually sought and won and valued not as 
a good thing in itself, but as a means of getting rid of tangi- 
ble grievances or securing tangible benefits, and when those 
objects have been attained, the interest in it has generally 
tended to decline. 

This does not mean that either in the English-speaking 
peoples or in France is democracy at present insecure. In 
the United Kingdom the practice of self-government has, 
especially since the Keform Act of 1832, become so deeply 
rooted as to have stood outside all controversy. The sover- 
eignty of the people is assumed as the basis of government. 
The extensions of the suffrage made in 1867 and 1885 were 
desired by the middle classes who already enjoyed that fran- 
chise, as by the mass of working-men who did not, and were 



42 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

carried not so much for the sake of redressing social or eco- 
nomic grievances as because a restriction of the electoral 
franchise was itself deemed to be a grievance. Similarly in 
the United States and in the British self-governing colonies, 
the presumption that all citizens already enjoying equal 
civil rights should be voters was accepted with hardly any 
cavil. The masses, being generally educated, and feeling no 
deference to any other class, claimed the vote as obviously due 
to them; and there was no body to withstand the claim. In 
France, where the minds of men have been formed by the 
fifty years' practice of republican institutions, those institu- 
tions are now supported by the forces of conservative inertia 
on which monarchy formerly relied. 

Nevertheless, although democracy lias spread, and although 
no country that has tried it shows any Bigna o\' forsaking it, 
we are not yet entitled to hold with the men of I7 s that it 

is the natural and therefore in the long run the inevitable 

form of government Much has happened since the rising 
sun of liberty dazzled the eye- of the States-General at Ver- 
sailles. Popular government has not yet been proved to 
guarantee, always and everywhere, good government If it 
be improbable, yet it is not unthinkable that aa in many 

countries impatience with tangible evil- substituted democ- 
racy for monarchy or oligarchy, a like impatience might some 
day reverse the process. 



CHAPTER V 

THE THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS OF DEMOCRACY 

" We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are 
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with 
certain inalienable Rights, thai among these arc Life, Liberty, 
and the pursuit of Happiness, that to secure these rights, 
Governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from 
the consent of the governed." (American Declaration of 
Independence, 177G.) 

" Men are born and continue equal in respect of their 
rights. 

" The end of political society is the preservation of the 
natural and imprescriptible rights <>{' man. These Rights 
are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression. 

" The principle of all Sovereignty resides essentially in 
the nation. No body, no individual, can exert any authority 
which is not expressly derived from it." 

" All citizens have a right to concur personally, or through 
their representatives in making the law. Being equal in its 
eyes, then, they are all equally admissible to all dignities, 
posts, and public employments. 

" No one ought to be molested on account of his opinions, 
even his religious opinions." (Declaration of the Eights of 
Man made by the National Assembly of France, August 
1791.) 

These two declarations, delivered authoritatively by two i y 
bodies of men at two moments of far-reaching historical im- 
portance, contain the fundamental dogmas, a sort of Apostles' 
Creed, of democracy. They are the truths on which it claims 
to rest, they embody the appeal it makes to human reason. 
Slightly varied in expression, their substance may be stated 
as follows. 

Each man who comes into the world comes into it Free, 
with a mind to think for himself, a will to act for himself. 

43 



44 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS fart i 

The subjection of one man to another except by his own 
free will is against Nature. All men are born Equal, with 
an equal right to the pursuit of happiness. That each man 
may secure this right and preserve his liberty as a member 
of a community, he must have an equal share in its govern- 
ment, that government being created and maintained by the 
consent of the community. Equality is the guarantee of 
independence. 

These axioms, being delivered as self-evident truths, ante- 
cedent to and independent of experience, require no proof. 
They are propounded as parts of the universal Law Off Na- 
ture, written on men's hearts, and therefore true always and 
everywhere. 

While the Declarations of the Natural Rights of Man 

made at Philadelphia and at Paris were resounding through 
the world there were other thinkers who, like some Greek 
philosophers more than two thousand years before, were 
drawing from the actual experience of mankind arguments 
which furnished another set of foundations on which democ- 
racy might rest. Testing the value of a principle by its 
practical results, they propounded a number of propositions, 
some of which may be given as familiar exampli 

Liberty is a good thing, because it develops the character 
of the individual, and conduces to the welfare of the com- 
munity. When one man, or a few men, rule over others, 
some of the subjects are sure t<» resent control and rebel 
against it, troubling the general peace. No one is good 
enough to be trusted with unlimited power. Unless he be a 
saint — perhaps even if he be a saint — he is sure to abuse it. 

Every man is the best judge of his own interest, and 
therefore best knows what sort of government and what laws 
will promote that interest. Hence those laws and that 
eminent will presumably be the best for a community as 
a whole which are desired by the Largest number of its 
members. 

Two men are presumably better able than one to judge 
what is for the common good. Three men are wiser still, 
and so on. Hence the larger the number of members of the 
community who have a right to give their opinion, the more 
likely to be correct (other things being equal) is the decision 
reached by the community. 



chap, v THEOKETICAL FOUNDATIONS 45 

Individual men may have selfish aims, possibly injurious 
to the community, but these will be restrained by the other 
members of the community whose personal aims will be dif- 
ferent. Thus the self-regarding purposes of individuals will 
be eliminated, and the common aims which the bulk of the 
community desires to pursue will prevail. 

As every man has some interest in the well-being of the 
community, a part at least of his own personal interest being 
bound up with it, every man will have a motive for bearing 
his share in its government, and he will seek to bear it, so 
far as his personal motives do not collide therewith. 

Inequality, by arousing jealousy and envy, provokes dis- 
content. Discontent disturbs tlie harmony of a community 
and induces strife. Hence equality in political rights, while 
it benefits the community by opening to talent the opportu- 
nity of rendering good service, tends also to peace and good 
order. 

To sum up, government by the whole people best secures 
the two main objects of all Governments — Justice and Hap- 
piness, Justice, because QO man or class or group will be 
strong enough to wrong others ; Happiness, because each man, 
judging best what is for his own good, will have every chance 
of pursuing it. The principles of liberty and equality are . 
justified by the results they yield. 

From these propositions it follows that the admission on 
equal tonus of the largest possible number of members of a 
community to share in its government on equal terms best 
promotes the satisfaction of all the members as individuals, 
and also the welfare of the community as a whole ; and these 
being the chief ends for which government exists, a govern- 
ment of the people by themselves is commended by the ex- 
perience of mankind. 

Reflective minds in our day will find arguments of this 
type more profitable than the purely abstract doctrine of 
Natural Rights, a series of propositions called self-evident, 
incapable of proof or disproof, interpretable and applicable 
in whatever sense the believer may please to give them. But 
these transcendental axioms have in fact done more to com- 
mend democracy to mankind than any utilitarian arguments 
drawn from history, for they appeal to emotion at least as 
much as to reason. They are simpler and more direct. 



46 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

Their very vagueness and the feeling that man is lifted to a 
higher plane, where Liberty and Equality are proclaimed as 
indefeasible rights, gave them a magic power. Rousseau 
fired a thousand for one whom Benthamism convinced. 

Towards the end of the eighteenth century the spirit of re- 
forming change was everywhere in the air. Reforms were 
long overdue, for the world had been full of tyranny, in- 
equality, and injustice. But the rapacity and cruelty of the 
Middle Acres had been borne patiently, save at moments of 
exceptional excitement, because violence and the rule of force 
were then taken as part of me nature of things. In a quieter 
time, when ferocity had abated and knowledge had spread 
among the laity, Betting free men's tongues and pens, injus- 
tices were more acutely resented, privileges of rank became 
odious, administrative abuses mat had once passed unnoticed 

began r«> be fell BS scandals. Then the Spirit of reform sud- 
denly kindled into a Spirit <»f destruction. The doetrine of 

Natural Rights overthrew the respect for tradition, for it 

acted in the name of Justice, sparing neither birth nor 

wealth, and treating "voted rights" a> WfOOgS. 

This was moreover the a^e of Illumination, when Authority, 

Tore accustomed to enforce its decrees by persecution, 
had been dethroned thai Reason might reign in its - 
! I mpanied and inspired by Justice, was 

to usher in a better world, with the Bister angel Fraternity 

following in their train, because human nature itself would 

be renovated, [nequality and repression had engendered one 

set of vices in rulers and another in their subjects — seltish- 
Bnd violence, hatred, perfidy, and revenL r <'. Under 

government — and in an a^e of reason little government 

would be needed — human nature, no Longer corrupted by 

of .-ucc. -.ful wickedness, would return to the pris- 
tine virtues the ('reator had meant to implant. With Lib- 
erty and Equality the naturally good instincts would spring 

Up into the ilower of rectitude, and hear the fruits of hroth- 

erly affection, kfen would work for the community, rejoio 

[ng not merely in their own freedom, hut because they d< 

the welfare of others also. These beliefs were the motive 

power which for a time made faith in democracy aim 
religion. It was a finer spirit than that of later revolution- 
ary extremists, by so much as Hope is better than Hatred, 



chap, v THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS 47 

the dream of a moral regeneration more ennobling than the 
prospect of material advantage. 

The blast of destruction which horrified Burke, whose in- 
sight perceived what havoc the uprooting of ancient habits 
and traditions must work, was to the ardent souls of those 
days a fresh breeze of morning, clearing away the foul va- 
pours that had hung over an enslaved world. They desired 
to destroy only in order to rebuild upon an enduring founda- 
tion, finding that foundation in the imprescriptible Rights of 
Man. Wordsworth has described the enthusiasm of that time 
in memorable words : — 

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, 

But to be young was very Heaven ! Oh times, 

When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights, 

A prime enchantress — to assist the work, 

Which then was going forward in her name! 

Not favoured spots alone, but the whole Earth, 

The beauty wore of promise — that which sets 

The budding rose above the rose full blown. 

What temper at the prospect did not wake 

To happiness unthought of? 

To examine and criticize the doctrine of Natural Rights, 
round which an immense literature has grown up, would be 
impossible within the limits of this book, nor is such an ex- 
amination needed, for I am here dealing with the phenomena 
of democracy, not with its theoretical basis. But it must be 
remembered that the conception of an Ideal Democracy which 
emerged in the eighteenth century has continued to affect 
politics not only on the speculative but on the practical side 
also. The view that natural justice prescribes this form of 
government continues to be reinforced by the belief that 
human nature, enlightened and controlled by Reason, may be 
expected so to improve under the influences of liberty and 
equality, peace and education, as to make that ideal a reality. 
An Ideal Democracy — the expression comes from Plato's 
remark that a pattern of the perfect State is perhaps stored 
up somewhere in heaven — may be taken to mean a com- 
munity in which the sense of public duty and an altruistic 
spirit fill the minds and direct the wills of the large majority 
of the citizens, so that the Average Citizen stands on the 
level of him whom we sometimes meet and describe as the 



48 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

Model Citizen. What then, expressed in the terms of our 
own day, would such a community be ? 

In it the average citizen will give close and constant atten- 
tion to public affairs, recognizing that this is his interest as 
well as his duty. He will try to comprehend the main issues 
of policy, bringing to them an independent and impartial 
mind, which thinks first not of his own but of the general 
interest. If, owing to inevitable differences of opinion as to 
what are the measures needed for the general welfare, parties 
become inevitable, he will join one, and attend its meetings, 
but will repress the impulses of party spirit. Never failing 
to come to the polls, he will vote for his party candidate only 
if satisfied by bis capacity and honesty. He will be ready to 
serve on a local Board or Council, and to be put forward as a 
candidate for the legislature (if satisfied of his own com- 
petence), because public service is recognized as a duty. 
With such citizens as electors, the legislature will he composed 
of upright and capable men, single-minded in their wish to 
serve the nation. Bribery in constituencies, corruption 
among public servants, will have disappeared. Leaders may 
not be always single-minded, nor assemblies always wise, nor 
administrators efficient, hut all will be at any rate honest 
and zealous, so that an atmosphere of confidence and good- 
will will prevail. Most of the causes that make for strife 
will be absent, for there will be no privileges, n<> advantages 
to excite jealousy. Office will be sought only because it gives 
opportunities for useful service. Power will bo shared by 
all, and a career open to all alike. Even if die law does 
not — perhaps it cannot — prevent the accumulation of for- 
tunes, these will be few and not inordinate, for public vigi- 
lance will close the illegitimate paths to wealth. All but the 
most depraved persons will obey and support the law, feeling 
it to be their own. There will be no excuse for violence, 
because the constitution will provide a remedy for every 
grievance. Equality will produce a sense of human solidar- 
ity, will refine manners, and increase brotherly kindness. 

Some of the finest minds of Wordsworth's time, both in 
Franco and in England, hoped for the sort of community I 
have outlined. We hear less about it now, for democracy 
has arrived, and one hundred and thirty years have brought 
disappointments. New questions regarding the functions of 



chap, v THEOKETICAL FOUNDATIONS 49 



the State have arisen dividing the votaries of democracy into 
different schools, one of which, denying the " natural right " 
to hold property proclaimed in 1789, conceives Nature to 
prescribe equality in property as well as in civic status. 
But though there is not much talk about Natural Eights, the 
influence of that old theory is still discernible. It gives 
strength to the movement for asserting popular sovereignty 
in the form of direct legislation by the people through the 
Initiative and Referendum, and their direct action in re- 
calling officials without a vote by the legislature or recourse 
to courts of law. It was a main factor in Becuring the exten- 
sion of the electoral suffrage to women. In England, the 
argument generally accepted in 1^7<> thai fitness for the exer- 
cise of the suffrage should be a pre-condition to the grant of 
it was in 1918 tossed contemptuously on the dustheap of 
obsolete prejudices, because a new generation had come to 
regard fche electoral franchise as a natural right. The same 
tendency appeal's in the readiness now shown to grant self- 
government to countries inhabited by races devoid of political 
experiences, such as the inhabitants of India and the Philip- 
pine Islands, and to sweep away the constitutional checks 
once deemed needful. It' restrictions on the power of the 
people are deemed inconsistent with democracy, it is because 
democratic institutions are now deemed to carry with them, 
as a sort of gift of Nature, the capacity to use them well. 

It was easy to idealize democracy when the destruction of 
despotism and privilege was the first and necessary step to a 
better world. Nowadays any one can smile or sigh over the 
faith and hope that inspired the successive revolutions that 
convulsed the European Continent in and after 1789. Any 
one can point out that men mistook the pernicious channels 
in which selfish propensities had been flowing for those pro- 
pensities themselves, which were sure to find new channels 
when the old had been destroyed. Yet the hopes of Words- 
worth's generation were less unwarranted than we are now 
apt to think them. People felt then, as we cannot so acutely 
feel to-day, how many evils had been wrought by a tyranny 
that spared neither souls nor bodies. It was natural to ex- 
pect not only the extinction of those abuses w T hich the Revolu- 
tion did extinguish, first for France and thereafter for most 
West European countries, but something like a regeneration 

VOL. I E 



50 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

of humanity. Even in sober England, even in America 
which had never had much to suffer from misgovernment, 
there were great and good men who pardoned many of the 
excesses of the Revolution for the sake of the blessings that 
seemed likely to follow. 

The abstract doctrines of the Revolutionary epoch and 
the visions of a better world that irradiated those doctrines, 
blurred as they have been in the lapse of years, have never 
ceased to recommend popular government to men of sanguine 
temper. But the Vision, the picture of an Ideal Democracy, 
a government upright and wise, beneficent and stable, as 
no government save that of the people for the people can be, 
has had greater power than the abstract doctrines, mighty as 
was their explosive force when they were first proclaimed. It 
is the conception of a happier life for all, coupled with a 
mystic faith in the People, that great multitude through 
whom speaks the Voice of the Almighty Power that makes 
for righteousness — it is this that constitutes the vital im- 
pulse of democracy. The country where the ideal democracy 
exists has n<>t yet heen discovered, but the faith in its exist- 
ence has survived many disappointments, many disillusion- 
ments. Many more will follow, hut them also the faith will 
survive. From time to time hope is revived by the appear- 
ance of a group of disinterested reformers whose zeal rouses 
a nation to sweep away abuses and leaves things better than 
it. found them. It is only sloth and torpor and the ae<|uies- 
cence in things known to be evil that are deadly. So we may 
hope that the Ideal will never cease to exert its power, but 
continue to stand as a beacon tower to one generation after 
another. 



CHAPTEK VI 



LIBERTY 



The late Lord Acton, most learned among the English- 
men of his generation, proposed to himself in his youth the 
writing of a History of Liberty from the earliest times to 
our own. The book remained unwritten not merely because 
the subject was vast, but also because his own learning was 
so wide and multifarious that he knew he would have been 
overcome by the temptation to endless digressions and profuse 
citations. Even the analysis of the conception of Liberty and 
the examination of the various meanings which the term has 
borne at different times and in different countries would 
need a treatise. ~No one seems to have undertaken the task. 
All that can be attempted here is to distinguish between 
some of the senses in which the word has been used and to 
indicate how they bear on one another. 

Many questions arise. What is the relation between Lib- 
erty and Democracy? Does the former prescribe the latter? 
Does the latter guarantee the former? Is Liberty a Posi- 
tive or a merely Negative conception ? Is it an End in it- 
self, or a means to an End greater than itself? But to ex- 
plain the various senses which the word has borne let us look 
for a moment at the history of the conception. 

The first struggles for Liberty were against arbitrary 
power and unjust laws. The ordinary Greek citizen of the 
sixth century b.c. was not free when oppressed by an oli- 
garchy or a tyrant, who took his property or put him to death 
in defiance of old usage and common justice. To him Lib- 
erty meant equal laws for all — laovo/xia — or what we should 
call a recognition of civil rights, securing exemption from 
the exercise of arbitrary power. The barons and prelates of 
England who extorted Magna Charta from the king com- 
plained of his tyrannical action contrary to the old customs 

51 



52 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

of the nation, and obtained from him a promise to abandon 
these and to abide by the Lex Terrae, the ancient and general 
customary law of the land. So the conflict between the Eng- 
lish Parliament and Charles the First arose over the acts of 
royal power that transgressed common law and right, unjust 
and unauthorized exactions and the extra legal action of the 
Star Chamber, violating the long-established rights of the 
subject to person and property. By this time, however, a 
new point of contention had emerged. The subject, besides 
suffering in person and property, was suffering also by being 
forbidden the expression and dissemination of his particular 
religious opinions and the right of worshipping God accord- 
ing to his own convictions. In such cases the private civil 
rights of the individual to life and property and the exercise 
of religion were alleged to be infringed. The struggle for 

O DO 

freedom was i sjle for the recognition of all these rights. 

This was the original sense of the famous Whig watchword, 
Civil and Religious Liberty. The two were associated as 
parts of tin- same thing, though Religious Liberty was more 
difficult to define, for practices that seem to fall within the 
sphere of religion may be injurious to public order or to 
morality, and therefore tit to be forbidden. 

In the course of this struggle the English combatants for 
freedom realized, as had done their Greek and Roman prede- 
cessors, that they could not win and hold civil and religious 
liberty bo long as the constitution of the State loft political 
power in the hands of a monarch or of a class. The rights 
of the body of the people could not be safe till the people — 
not necessarily the whole, but at Least a considerable part of 
the people- — had an effective share in the government 
There waja therefore a further conflict to secure Political 
Liberty, Le* a constitution restricting arbitrary power and 
transferring supremacy from the Crown to the Nation. 
Thenceforth, and for two centuries, the conception of Lib- 
erty covered not only private civil rights but public and polit- 
ical rights also; and especially the right of electing the rep- 
resentatives thrOUgh wlioill the people were to exercise their 

power. Civil and Religious Liberty m the old sense receded 
into the background, being assumed to have been secured, 
while Political Liberty, being deemed to be still not complete 

even in England, and not having been yet won in many other 



CHAP. VI 



LIBERTY 53 



countries, continued to occupy men's minds. Civil Liberty 
had originally been the aim and political liberty the road to 
it, but now Political Liberty was thought of as the cause and 
civil liberty as the consequence. So Liberty came to mean 
self-government. A " free people " was understood to be a 
people which rules itself, master of its own destinies both at 
home and wherever its power extends abroad. 

Much later, and perhaps not fully till the nineteenth cen- 
tury, was it perceived that besides his private civil rights to 
person, property, and the exercise of religion, and besides 
also his political rights to share in the government of the 
State, there are other matters in which restrictions may be 
imposed on the individual which limit his action where re- 
striction may be harmful, or is at any rate not obviously nec- 
essary. In the old struggle for Civil Rights the whole peo- 
ple, except the ruling man or class, usually stood together in 
demanding those rights. 3 Everybody therefore supposed that 
when Political Liberty had been secured, the rights of the 
citizen were safe under the aegis of self-government, which 
means in practice the rule of the majority. But it presently 
appeared that a majority is not the same thing as the whole 
people. Its ideas and wishes may be different from those of 
minorities within the people. A- legislation is in its hands, 
it may pass laws imposing on a minority restrictions which 
bear hardly on them. Whether it does this from a wish to 
beat down their resistance, or in the belief that such restric- 
tions make for the interest of the community as a whole, in 
either case it restricts the action of the individual, and that 
perhaps where restriction may be needless or mischievous. 
Thus a new conception arises, "giving rise to new questions, 
viz. the conception of Individual Liberty, an exemption from 
control in respect of matters not falling within either the old 
and accepted category of private civil rights, nor within the 
category of political rights. 

Thus we find four kinds of Liberty whose relations have 
to be determined : 

Civil Liberty, the exemption from control of the citizen in 
respect of his person and property. 

i Except of course where religious freedom was involved, for in such 
cases there was usually a section which supported persecution on behalf 
of its own faith. 



54 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

Religious Liberty, exemption from control in the expres- 
sion of religious opinions and the practice of worship. 

Political Liberty, the participation of the citizen in the 
government of the community. 

Individual Liberty, exemption from control in matters 
which do not so plainly affect the welfare of the whole com- 
munity as to render control necessary. 

These descriptions — they are not Definitions — are nec- 
essarily vague and general, for the conceptions of the matters 
that fall within each of the four terms aforesaid have varied 
and will continue to vary. Mo<r vague, and indeed inea- 
pable <>f definition, are the matters That belong to the cate- 
gory of Rights of the Individual. Thinkers an 4 not agreed 
as to what these rights are, yet none doubts their existence 

and their title to he protected. Each man has a presumptive 

light to enjoy that sort of natural exercise of free will which 
a bird has when it flits from bough to bough or soars singing 
into the sky. But when concrete examples begin to be ad- 
duced, what differences of view! Do laws forbidding the 
use of intoxicant-. <>r the Carrying of |»i>tols, or limiting the 
hours during which a man may work, or suppressing lot- 
-. or punishing the advocacy of tyrannicide, or making 
vaccination compulsory, or fixing a minimum wage, or for- 
bidding a gardener to -room hi- employer's horse, infringe 

either Individual Liberty or ( ivil Liberty in the old BOnSC 

of the term I What is to be said of laws directed in some 
countries against certain religions orders, or of thOM which 
elsewhere forbid the intermarriage of white and coloured 
persons? These cannot be here discussed, but difficult as it 
is to find any line fixing the bounds of Individual Liberty, it 
is plain that the presumption is in favour of freedom, not 
only for the sake of securing to each man the maximum of 
harmless pleasures, but also in the interests of the community, 
for Individuality is precious, and the nation profits by the 
free play of its best minds and the unfettered development 
of its strongest characters. Individual Liberty, though it 
consists in exemption from control, has a Positive as well 
as a Negative side. It imports activity, it implies the spon- 
taneous and pleasurable exercise of the powers of Willing 
and Doing. 



( HAP. VI 



LIBERTY 55 



What are the relations to one another of these several 
kinds of Liberty ? 

Civil Liberty may exist without Political Liberty, for a 
monarch or an oligarchy may find it well to recognize and 
respect it. But it was won by political struggles, and has 
in fact been seldom found where Political Liberty did not 
exist to guard it. 

Conversely, the presence of Political Liberty practically 
involves that of Civil Liberty, at least in the old historical 
sense of that term, because in a self-governing people the ma- 
jority are pretty certain to desire for each one among them 
the old and familiar securities for person and property, which 
are, however, in some free governments less ample than in 
English-speaking countries. This applies also to Religious 
Liberty. Yet it is easy to imagine a State in which an over- 
whelming majority of one persuasion, religions or anti-re- 
ligious, would accord Bcanl justice, or indulgence, to those 
who dissented from the dominant view. 

As Individual Liberty consists in Exemption from Legal 
Control, so Political Liberty consists in participation in Legal 
Control. It is an Active Right. Between Individual Lib- 
erty and Political Liberty there is no necessary connection; 
each may exist without the other. An enlightened autocrat 
might think that discontent would be reduced if his sub- 
jects were given free scope for the indulgence of their tastes 
and fancies. But such rulers have been few. Monarchs 
have been surrounded by privileged aristocracies. An Ab- 
solute Government usually relies on its police, fears the free 
expression of opinion, is worked by a strong bureaucracy, 
naturally disposed to extend its action into the regulation 
of private life and the supersession of individual initiative. 
The individual has far better chances under constitutional 
government, for the spirit of democracy has generally fos- 
tered the sense of personal independence, and been a tolerant 
spirit, willing to let everybody seek his pleasure in his own 
way. Yet even popular government may care little for the 
" self-determination " or " self-realization " of the individual 
citizen. 

It is hard to draw any line of demarcation between Civil 
Liberty and Individual Liberty. The distinction is rather 



/ 



56 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

historical than theoretical. Both consist in Exemption from 
Control, i.e. in the non-interference of State authority with 
the unfettered exercise of the citizens' will. But the con- 
ception of Civil Liberty was older than that of Individual 
Liberty. When men were fighting against oppression by 
kings or oligarchs, they assumed that there were certain re- 
strictions to which every one must be subject by law. while 
there were certain other restrictions which must be abolished. 
It was against the latter, which nearly everybody felt to be 
oppressive, that they strove. Such were arbitrary arrests and 
general warrants and the power of the Executive over the 
Judiciary. What might be classed as being legitimate re- 
strictions they did not stop to define, nor has anybody since 
succeeded in defining them, for the doctrines of thinkers as 
well as the notions of ordinary citizens have been different 
in different countri< a and have varied from time to time in 

the same country. Enough to say that although the concep- 
tion <>f Individual Liberty may lie made to include thi 
emptions our ana stors contended for in the seventeenth cen- 
tury, and lli«. nuh every kind of individual liberty may be 
called a Civil Liberty, then- is this significant difference thai 
the Civil liberties of those older days were extorted from ar- 
bitrary monarchs, whereas what we call Individual Liberty 
to-day ha- to be defended, when and bo far as it needs de- 
fence, again8t the constitutional action of a self-governing 

community. 

I pass by the cases in which a democratic nation has shown 
by its treatment of ;i subject country that it doe- not value 

the principles of liberty for their own sake — Buch cai 

that <»f the Athenian democracy ruling over the outlying 
cities whom it Called its allies, or that of some of the Swiss 
( iantons, in their rule over their subjects in the valhy - BOUth 

of the Alp-. Xor need we stop to consider cases in which 
a compact majority of one colour denies equal rights to those 
of another colour who dwell in their midst, for these have 
special features that would Deed explanations out of place 
here. Bui it is worth while lo note the tendencies which in 

many free countries have, in extending the scope of Legisla- 
tion and of the administrative interference of the State, en- 
croached «>n the sphere b which individual will and action 
used to move unrestrained. 



CHAP. VI 



LIBERTY 57 



Our times have seen a growing desire to improve the con- 
ditions of the poorer classes, providing better houses and 
other health-giving conditions, fixing the hours of labour, 
raising wages, enacting compulsory methods for settling la- 
bour disputes. There is a wish to strike at the power of cor- 
porate wealth and monopolistic combinations by handing over 
large industries, or the means of transportation, or such 
sources of national wealth as coal and iron, to the State to 
be managed by it for the common benefit There is also a 
passion for moral reform conspicuous in the effort to forbid 
the use of intoxicants. In these and other similar directions 
the power of the State seems to open the most direct way to 
the attainment of the aims desired. But every enlargement 
of the sphere of State action narrows the sphere left to the 
will of the individual, restricting in one way or another his 
natural freedom. So long as (lie people were ruled by a 

small class, they distrusted their rulers, and would have re- 
garded administrative interference in many of the matters 
enumerated as a reduction of their liberty. But this jealousy 
of the State vanished when the masses obtained full control 
of the government. The administration is now their own: 
their impatience d<'<iiv< quick returns. " Why," they say, 
" should we fear government? Why not use it for our bene- 
fit? Why await the slow action of ameliorative forces when 
we can set the great machine to work at full speed 2 " 

These tendencies have during the last half-century gained 
the upper hand, and have discredited, without refuting, the 
laissez-faire doctrine which had held the field of economic 
thought since the days of Adam Smith. They seem likely 
to keep the ground they have won. Regulative legislation 
may reduce the freedom of workmen and of employers, may 
take great departments of industry out of private hands, 
may impose new obligations and proscribe old forms of pleas- 
ure. A nation may, like the Prussian, submit to be forced 
into certain moulds in order to secure the military strength 
or industrial organization or commercial prosperity which a 
skilled administration and the use of public money can 
create. 1 Minorities may fare hardly at the hands of majori- 



i A reaction against the extreme extension of State power has driven 
some philosophic minds into what is called Anarchism. Its principles, 
the attractiveness of which many of us have felt, do not solve the dim- 



58 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

ties apt to believe that numbers mean wisdom, and persuaded 
that if they choose to impose a restriction on themselves they 
are entitled to impose it upon others. Nevertheless, where 
the evident good of society is involved, individual preferences 
will be forced to give way on the ground that to arrest the 
will of a majority is to sacrifice their liberty, and so neglect 
the happiness of the greater number for that of the smaller. 
But. whatever the future may bring, the freedom of thought, 
speech, and writing do DOt seem at present threatened. The 
liberty of the press is a traditional principle in the popular 
mind: democratic habits foster the sense of persona] inde- 
pendence and express themselves in the phrase " hive and 
Let Livi 

Two tendencies run through the history of the Church as 
well as of the State, both having roots deep in human nature. 
In daily life we oote the pn t what may be called the 

centripetal and centrifugal forces in human society, the 

Working of One Set of tendencies which make some men de- 
sire a dose and constant association with others, and of other 

tendencies which make other men desire to stand apart and 
follow their own bent Some men are happy with Nature 
and ho«.k- and their own meditations, other- need the stimu- 
lus of constant intercourse with their fellows. In the ( Ihurch 
loeial impulse consolidated the early Christian communi- 
ties under tic bishop, and create. 1 monastic orders abjuring 

the free life of the world to dwell together, while intn 
tion and the feeling of the direct relation of the soul to (.-,1 
produced the anchorites of the fifth and sixth centuries, and 
that strenuon tion of the rightfl of individual conscience 

which came from the English Puritans of the seventeenth. 
Without the one tendency, action would he disconnected and 
ineffective; without the other, thought would lose in variety 
and vigour; there would he [ess poetry and less philosophy. 

Ubi spirit us Domini, ihi Lilxrhis. The world Seems to have 

now entered an era in which the principles of associated ac- 
tion and of the dominance of the community are gaining 
strength. Though the Prussian doctrine of the State is on- 

culty. for if anarchy OMUM the withdrawal of legal control acting 

through State power, the door is opened to the rule <>f mere f<>r<<\ the 

foree "f the physically strong, in which the wrak will go to tht 

and indi\idnal liberty pcri-h more completely than at the hands of the 

State. 



CHAP. VI 



LIBERTY 59 



welcome to English-speaking peoples, the policies it has sug- 
gested have been slowly, almost insensibly, supplanting the 
individualism of last century. The ideal of happiness may 
change from that of birds wantoning in the air to that of 
bees busy in carrying honey to the common hive. We per- 
ceive that the enthusiasm for liberty which fired men's hearts 
for a century or more from the beginning of the American 
Revolution down to our own time has now grows cool. The 
dithyrambic expression it found in the poets and orators of 
those 'lavs sounds strange and hollow in the ears of the pres- 
ent generation, bent on securing, with the least possible exer- 
tion, the material conditions of comfort and well-being. 

Liberty may not have achieved all that wafl expected, vet 

it remains true that nothing is more vital to national progress 

than tin- spontaneous development of individual character, 
and that free play of intellect which is independent of cur- 
rent prejudice, examines everything by the light of reason 

and history, and fearlessly defends Unpopular opinions. 

[Independence of thought was formerly threatened by mon- 
archs who feared the disaffection of their subjects. May it 
not again he threatened by other form- of intolerance, pos- 
sible even in a popular government I 

Room should be found in cvi'vy country for men who, like 
the prophets in ancient Israel, have along with their wrath 
at the evils of their own time inspiring visions of a bettor 

future and the right to speak their minds. That love of 
freedom which will hear with opposition hecause it has faith 
in the victory of truth is none too common. Many of those 
who have the word on their lips are despots at heart. Those 
men in whom that love seemed to glow with the hottest flame 
may have had an almost excessive faith in its power for 
good, but if this be an infirmity, it is an infirmity of noble 
minds, which democracies ought to honour. 1 

Xot less than any other form of government does democ- 
racy need to cherish Individual liberty. It is, like oxygen 
in the air, a life-giving spirit. Political liberty will have 
seen one of its fairest fruits wither on the bough if that 
spirit should decline. 

i Mazzini and Gladstone were, among the famous Europeans of the 
last generation, the two who seemed to those who talked with them most 
possessed by this faith. 



CHAPTER VII 

EQUALITY 

The conception of Equality needs to be here examined, 
for it has been the prime factor in the creation of democratic 
theory, and from misunderstandings of it have Bprung half 
the crmrs which democratic practice hafl committed. Let us 
begin by distinguishing four different kind- of Equality. 

A. Civil Equality - in th don by all the 

citizens of th< - in the Bphere of private law. All 

have an equal right to be protected in respect of person and 

and family relations, and to appeal to the Courts of 

Law for Buch protection. Bach equality was found in few 

count) but ifl now (subject tO trivial 

the rule in all civilized oommunit 

1). Political Equality where all citizens — or at 

Least all adult ma tu have a Like -hare in the g 

eminent of the community, and are alike eligible to hold any 
post in its service, apart, of course, from provisions as to 
age or education or the taint of crime. Such equality now 
obtains in countries which have adopted manhood (<>r uni- 

rsal I -11 

C. Social Equality, a vaguer thing, where no formal 

distinc •<■ drawn by law <»r custom between different 

ranks -n- c v instance, the right to enter 

cea from which others are exclud< the Ron 

te in the amphitheatre for the senaton and 
in Prussia certain persona only could be 

ived at court (Hoffahigkei aetimes the ten 

tended to denote the conditions of a society where uobody 

looks Up to Or looks down upon anv one else in ' of 

birth or wealth, aa La the ease in Norway, and. broadly speak- 
ing, in Switzerland and the United States and the British 
self ing I dominions. 

These three kinds of Equality arc f;imiliar, and the two 

60 



chap, vn EQUALITY 61 

former definable by law. To Social Equality we may pres- 
ently return. There is, however, a fourth kind less easy to 
deal with. 

D. Natural Equality ia perhaps the best name to give to 
that similarity which exists, or seem- to exist, at birth be- 
tween all human beings born with the same five senses. 
Every human creature comes naked into the world possessing 
(if a normal creature) similar bodily organs and presumably 
similar mental capacities, desires, and passions. For some 
days or weeks little or do difference in these respects is per- 
ceptible between one child and another. All seem alike, all 
presumptively entitled t<> the same rights in this world and 

an equal prospect of happiness both in this world and the 

next, since all ; souls of the Bame value in the sight of 

God. It is this equality that the American Declaration of 
[Independence means when it says that " All men are born 
free and equal ": it is this (applied to human beings when 
they have reached maturity) which the Greek orator Alci- 
damas meant when he said thai God made no one a slave. 1 

which St. Paul meant when he wrote, " In Christ there is 
neither dew dot Greek, barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor 
free." Christianity, which firat proclaimed the doctrine of 
Natural Equality, and did mosl to establish it, treated all 
who entered the ( Ihristian community as equals and brethren. 
Slaverv lasted on in many parts of the world, even among 
Christians, but (excepl for a futile attempt made eighty years 
ago by a few slave-ownera to argue that the negro was some- 
thing less than a human being) the principle has not been 
denied for centuries past, and the right to liberty has been 
admitted among the primordial rights to which all men are 
entitled through the whole <^ life. 

But as the infants grow, innate but previously undiscover- 
able differences are revealed. Some prove to be strong in 
body, forceful in will, industrious, intelligent. Some are 
feeble, timorous, slack, dull. When maturity is reached, 
some begin to render service to the community as workers 
or thinkers or inventors or soldiers. Others may become a 
burden to it, or prove tit only for occupations needing little 
strength or skill. Thus the supposed Natural Equality turns 
into an Inequality which is more evidently natural, because 

1 'EXeuflepous ci(pr)Ke ttcwtcls deos, ovSeva 5ov\ov i] <pv<ris TreTrotr]K€v. 



62 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

due to the differences in the gifts which Nature has be- 
stowed on some and denied to others. The fact that the 
progress of mankind in arts and sciences and letters and every 
form of thought has been due to the efforts of a compara- 
tively small number of highly gifted minds rising out of the 
common mass speaks for itself. Natural Inequality has 
been and must continue to be one of the most patent and 
effective factors in human society. It furnished whatever 
theoretical justification the ancient world found for slavery ; 
it was a basis used in argument by the slaveholders of North 
America and Brazil down to our own days, though the results 
of slavery, moral as well as economic, had long ago con- 
demned that institution. To reconcile this Natural In- 
equality a- a Fact with the principles <>f Natural Equality 

as a Doctrine is one of the chief problems which every 

eminent has to soli 

Does Natural Justice require Political Equality 1 Kfosi 

Greek democrats held that it did, and that all citizens should 

have an equal right of voting and equal eligibility to office. 
In the modern world the sentiment of fraternity, mainly due 
to Christianity, has counted for more than any abstract 
theory. Whatever inequalities exist between men, the feel- 
ing remains thai u one mai good as another," or as 
Burns wrote, " b man's a man for a 1 that," in this sense at 
Least, that the things men have in common are more im- 
portant than the things in which they differ, and that the 

pleasure »>r pain of each I even it" not measurable by the Bame 
standard) ought to he equally regarded. The association of 
Equality with Justice is strong; because every one feels that, 
the chances of birth have given to some ami refused to others 
a share of the external conditions of well-being which has 
no relation to intrinsic mi n't, bo that the disparity ought not 
to he artificially increased The sense of human sympathy 
appeals to the finer and gentler souls who desire to lift ap 
those to whom fortune has been unkind, and it finds favour 
with that large majority of persons who have no special ex- 
cellence that could entitle them to Bpecial treatment Those 
who, agreeing with Aristotle's new that Justice is not abso- 
lute but relative to b man's capacities, so thai each man's 
share in political functions should he proportioned to ids 

virtue ;ind his power of serving the State, have in modern 



CHAP. VII 



EQUALITY 63 



times argued that ignorance should disqualify for the suf- 
frage, and that one who has not enough property to give him 
a permanent interest in the country, or who contributes noth- 
ing in taxes, should not be placed on a level with the man of 
education possessed of at least some taxable property. 1 

To this it was replied that the poor man has the same flesh 
and blood as the rich. He has an interest in his country's 
welfare, and suffers quite as much as the rich man by its 
misfortunes. Even if he has little property, he has his la- 
bour, an indispensable contribution to the country's wealth. 
He is liable to military service in time of war. If he is a 
Roman Catholic, he receives the same sacraments as does the 
rich, and his son may become a priest, dispenser of the means 
of salvation. If he is a Protestant be is, at least in America 
and Scotland and in the Nonconformist Churches of Eng- 
land, allowed his voice in the affairs of the congregation. 
Why should he be debarred from bearing his part in the 
civil government of the country? 3 [f in these things Nat- 
ural Equality La admitted, why not in politics? It is the 
simplest rule, the expression of Natural Justice. 

In the struggles over Political Equality, turning chiefly 
on the extension of the electoral franchise, the equalitarian 
view prevailed not so much because it was admitted in prin- 
ciple as in respect of the want of criteria that could be prac- 
tically applied to determine a man's fitness to vote. Intel- 
ligence, knowledge, and a sense of civil duty were the three 
qualities needed. But there were no means for testing these. 
No line of discrimination could be drawn between those who 
possess these merits and the rest of the community. No test 
of fitness could be applied which would not admit many per- 
sons whom their neighbours knew to be personally bad cit- 
izens, and probably exclude many who were known to be 
good. The possession of property was obviously no evidence 
of merit. Many who disliked universal suffrage allowed 
themselves to be driven to acquiesce in it for the sake of sim- 

i In Belgium this notion induced a plan which, while bestowing votes 
on all adult males, allotted what were called " supplementary votes " 
to persons possessed of various property or educational qualifications. 
This system was subsequently abolished. 

2 There were, of course, other arguments for extensions of the suf- 
frage, such as the broadening of the basis of power and the securing 
of more constant attention to grievances, but these need no notice here. 



64 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

plicity. Thus it has come to be deemed the corner-stone of 
democracy. But though Natural Equality triumphed 
doctrine, Natural Inequality remained as a fact. To votaries 
of the doctrine it was, however, an unwelcome fact, which, 
since it could not be denied in the face of the evidence, they 
sought to ignore or minimize. Having decided that every 
man was fit to vote, they argued that as he was tit to vote upon 
policy he must he also fitted to execute policy. If one man 
is as good as another at the polls, one man is as good as 
another for office, or at least for all offices except the highest. 1 
The people having been recognized as competent to govern 
themselves, why scrutinize degrees of competence for elective 
posts? "The average man rule-, and his authority i< best 
ated to oin- who best represents the mass, because himself 

an average man. To suggest that BpeciaJ knowledge and skill 
must be Bought for in an official ox a member of the legisla- 
ture i- to Cast a Blight on the citizens in general/' This 
attitude was th< to adopt because the bulk of the 

citi/eu- wen QOt sutiiciently instructed to know the value <>( 

skill and knowledge. Popular leaders usually encourage the 

Self-COnfidi DCe "t' the multitude, and may carry their flattery 
BO far afl to disclaim their own attainments and dissimulate 

their own tat la t«> make these Beem to be just those of 

the average citizen, that type of simple untutored virtue 

which has eoxne down t<» dj from the fabled Golden Age of 
Besiod. There have been tines and countries in which this 
exaltation of the Common .Man has keen carried so far as to 
treat differences of capacity a- negligible. The people is con- 
ceived of not a- an , : all sorts of different kinds 
of mim Is and characters, each kind the proper complement. 

of the other, hut as a uumher «»f individuals resembling one 

another like pebbles OH the heaeh, their .-<>ei;il unity based on 
their equality and guaranteed by their similarity. The doc- 
trine of Equality, filling the people with a belief in their own 

' \t Athens almost nil tin- officials, except the Generals, were chosen 
by lot, mill in order -till further t<> -cure equality, chosen for short 
terms, so thai many COUld enjoy oilier Imv Chapter XVI.). A similar 

system was in force in Florence under the republic in the fifteenth cen- 
tury, though in practice it was so worked a- frequently to vest the chief 
offices in the persons whom the ruling party preferred. In the United 

state-, the -anie tendency appears in the \eiy slight regard had to 
personal fitness: in choosing and running candidates for most el 
posts. 






CHAP, vn 



EQUALITY 65 



competence, even for judgeships, was particularly strong in 
new countries where the early colonists were nearly all oc- 
cupied with the same tasks, developing a self-helpfulness 
which could dispense with special knowledge. But it has not 
been confined to those countries. Everybody remembers how 
in the Terror of 1793 a plea that Lavoisier's life might be 
spared was met by the remark " The Republic has no need of 
chemists." The Russian Communists of to-day appear to 
take the " proletarian " handworker as the type, and propose 
to reduce every one else to his level. Nevertheless the prog- 
ress of physical science, involving special training for the 
purposes of production, and the enlarged sphere of govern- 
mental action, which increases the value of skill and knowl- 
edge, have been making the recognition of Natural Inequality 
in the selection of administrative officials more and more in- 
evitable. A country which should fail to recognize this can- 
not but fall behind its competitors. 

What then is the relation to one another of these different 
kinds of Equality ? 

There has been a long conflict between the sentiment of 
Natural Equality and the stubborn fact of Natural In- 
equality. In the ancient world and the Middle Ages the lat- 
ter had free course and prevailed. With the progress of 
civilization and the establishment of constitutional govern- 
ment the sentiment of Equality won its first victories in cre- 
ating Civil Equality. It overcame the selfishness and prej- 
udice of ruling classes, and showed that Natural Inequality 
is entirely compatible with the possession of equal private 
rights by all subjects or citizens. Its next struggle was for 
Political Equality. Here abstract theory and sentiment were 
confronted by practical considerations, for the risks of con- 
ferring suffrage on masses of ill-informed persons, many of 
them heretofore uninterested in public affairs, were un- 
deniable. Were those who were for any reason — and there 
were many different reasons in different cases — palpably 
inferior in the capacity for self-government to be entrusted 
with a power they might, because unfit, use to their own 
detriment as well as to that of the whole community ? Ab- 
stract theory has, however, generally prevailed, though in ( / 
one remarkable case Natural Inequality avenged itself, for 
the suffrage granted after the American Civil War to the 

VOL. I F 



66 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

recently emancipated negroes has now been virtually with- 
drawn. It had embittered the whites ; it had not helped the 
coloured people. 

The sentiment of Natural Equality, strengthened by the 
attainment of Political Equality, has done much to promote 
Social Equality. That kind of Equality can, no doubt, exist 
under a despot who allows no voting rights to his subjects, 
and may stand all the stronger if they are all alike powerless. 1 
Yet it is hard in any government except a democracy, and not 
too easy even there, to prevent the rise of families or cor- 
porations accumulating wealth, and, through wealth, gaining 
power. Legislation has, in sweeping away class distinctions 
in the civil and political spheres, left social relations un- 
touched. Law indeed could not, except perhaps under a full- 
blown Communist regime, prevent citizens from choosing 
their friends among those whose habits and tastes are like 
their own. Even in Norway and Switzerland, and still more 
in the United States, social sets continue to exist which are 
more or less exclusive, and the admission to which men, and 
still more women, are found to desire. The value of Social 
Equality — and how great that value is appears when we 
compare our century with the eighteenth — depends upon its 
spontaneity. It docs much to smooth the working of demo- 
cratic institutions. The economic antagonism of classes, dan- 
gerous in free governments, is less acute when then is no 
social scorn on the one side and no social resentment on the 
other. 

Last of all we come to Economic Equality, i.e. the at- 
tempt to expunge all differences in wealth by allotting to 
every man and woman an equal share in worldly goods. 
Here arises the sharpest conflict between the principle or 
sentiment of Natural Equality and the fad of Natural In- 
equality. It is argued that Natural Justice, in prescribing 
Equality, requires the State to establish a true and thorough- 
going Equality by redressing the injustices of fortune — 
taking from those who have too much to supply the needs of 

i A sort of Social Equality has always existed in Musulman countries, 
because all Musulmans are, as True Believers, gathered into a religious 
community which, despising the members of other faiths, recognizes an 
internal brotherhood. This sentiment has given civil equality, but done 
little or nothing for political equality, no Muslim country having bo 
far succeeded in working constitutional government. 



CHAP. VII 



EQUALITY 67 



those who have too little, and providing that in future all 
shall share alike in the products of labour. Wealth, pro- 
duced by the toil of the Many, must not be allowed to ac- 
cumulate in the hands of the Few. The establishment of 
Political Equality has not, as was fondly hoped, secured gen- 
eral contentment and the peace of the community, but has 
rather accentuated the contrast between two sections of those 
citizens who, alike in the possession of voting power, are alike 
in little else. Of what use is that political power which the 
masses have won if it does not enable them to benefit their 
condition by State action, carried, if necessary, even to the 
extinction of private property I 

To this it was answered that Economic Equality, no new 
conception, has always been nothing more than a conception, 
a vision unrealizable in fact. Something like it may have 
existed among primitive savages whose only goods were a 
deerskin and a weapon, but as life became more civilized by 
the invention of new means to provide for new wants, so 
much the more did intelligence, strength, persistent industry, 
and self-control enable their possessor to acquire and retain 
more than his less gifted fellows. By these qualities the arts 
of life advanced, enabling greater comfort to be secured for 
all. If all property were divided up on one New Year's 
Day, the next would see some men rich and some poor. To 
ignore differences in productive capacity would be not to 
follow Nature but to fly in her face. 

With this controversy we are not here concerned, for De- 
mocracy — w r hich is merely a form of government, not a 
consideration of the purposes to which government may be 
turned — has nothing to do with Economic Equality, which 
might exist under any form of government, and might pos- 
sibly work more smoothly under some other form. The peo- 
ple in the exercise of their sovereignty might try to establish 
community of property, as they might try to establish a par- 
ticular form of religion or the use of a particular language, 
but their rule would in either case be neither more nor less 
a Democracy. Political Equality can exist either along with 
or apart from Equality in property. 

Equality has in this chapter been considered only with re- 
gard to civilized communities in which a government more 
or less popular exists. Other considerations arise in coun- 



68 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 



tries where white men rule over, or are in close and perma- 
nent contact with, races of a different colour. How far can 
the principles which seem fit for the former set of cases be 
applied to such facts as are presented by Louisiana, or South 
Africa, or the Philippine Isles? On this subject some ob- 
servations will be found in a later chapter. 1 

Nearly a century ago Tocqueville remarked that the love 
of Equality was stronger than the love of Liberty, so that 
he could imagine a nation which had enjoyed both parting 
less reluctantly with the latter than with the former. Noth- 
ing has happened since his day to contradict, and some things 
to support, this view. Although the belief in Equality as an 
abstract principle is weaker in men's minds to-day, the pas- 
sion for Equality in practice remains strong in France and 
the United States, and has spread to Australia and New 
Zealand. It may continue so far as our eye can reach into 
the future, for nothing is nearer to a man than the sense of 
his personal importance. 2 Yet we must remember that this 
was not always so. The feeling of rever en ce, the disposition 
to look up and to obey, is also rooted deep in human nature. 
It appeals not only to that indolence or lack of initiative 
which disposes men to follow rather than to think or act for 
themselves, but also to imagination, as when any striking 
figure appears, rising high above them, or when associations 
have gathered round ancient and famous families, like those 
of Rome even in the Inter days of the republic. There was 
a time when men nourished their self-esteem, ;is did the de- 
pendants of a greal house in mediaeval England, as in later 

times the soldiers of some great warrior h:ive heen known to 

do, on an identification of their efforts and hopes with the 

glory and fortunes of those who led (hem. Improbable as 
is the recurrence of the conditions which, down to the eight- 
eenth century, and in some countries even later, not. only 
secured respect and deference for what, was then called the 
Upper Class, but inspired romantic devotion to a legitimate 
sovereign, however personally unworthy, it remains true thai 
what men once have felt they may come to feel again. The 

1 See chapter "Democracy and the Backward Races" iii Pari 111. 

2 An American who, having fallen on evil days, was obliged to hire 
himself as day labourer to a negro employer is reported to have stipu- 
lated that the employer should always address him as " Boss." 



chap, vn EQUALITY 69 

instinct of personal independence, vehement ,in days when 
there were many injuries to resent and many abuses to de- 
stroy, may wane under new conditions, and come to count 
for less in the political life of nations than it does to-day in 
the English-speaking world. 



CHAPTER VIII 

DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 

In 1868, when Britain was taking its first long step 
towards Universal Suffrage, Robert Lowe, who had been the 
most powerful opponent of that step, said in Parliament, 
" Educate your masters." Two years later the first English 
Act establishing public elementary schools was passed. 
Thenceforth the maxim that the voter must have instruction 
fitting him to use his power became a commonplace; and 
the advocates of democracy passed unconsciously, by a natural 
if not a logical transition, from the proposition that education 
is a necessary preparation for the discharge of civic functions 
to the proposition that it is a sufficient preparation. Modern 
democratic theory rests on two doctrines as its two sustain- 
ing pillars : that the gift of the suffrage 1 creates the will to use 
it, and that the gift of knowledge creates the capacity to use 
the suffrage aright From this it is commonly assumed to 
follow that the more educated a democracy is, the better will 
'vernment he. This view, being hopeful, was and is 
popuhir. It derived strength from the fact that all the 
despotic governments of sixty yean ago, and some of them 
down to our own day, were either indifferent or hostile to the 
spread of education among their subjects, because they feared 
that knowledge and intelligence would create a wish for free- 
dom, 1 and remembered that such old movements of revolt as 
Wat Tyler's rising in 1381 and the Peasants' War in Ger- 
many in 1522, had failed largely because the discontented 
subjects did not know how to combine. 

To determine the relation between popular government 
and education, let us begin by asking what Education means 
in its relation to citizenship. In the England of 1868 ele- 

i Even the Venetian rulers of Dalmatia in the eighteenth century 
kept their Slav subjects ignorant so that they might be less able to 
assert themselves. 

70 



chap, vin DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 71 

mentary education included little more than reading, writ- 
ing, and arithmetic, for that was practically all that the large 
majority of schools for the people attempted. The concep- 
tion has now widened, as schools have improved and as school 
life has been lengthened. Most primary schools in every 
English-speaking country now include in their curriculum 
some grammar, history, and geography, often also a little 
physical science. Yet when we talk of popular education 
it is still the ability to read and write that is uppermost in 
our minds, and the standard by which a nation's education 
is judged is that of Illiteracy. Wherever any law fixes an 
educational qualification for the suffrage, that is the test ap- 
plied. Thus we naturally slip into the belief that the power 
to read is a true measure of fitness, importing a much 
higher level of intelligence and knowledge than the illiterate 
possess. 

In modern civilized countries, where schools abound, igno- 
rance of letters is prima facie evidence of a backwardness 
which puts a man at a disadvantage, not only for rising in 
the world, but for exercising civic rights, since in such coun- 
tries nearly all knowledge comes, not by talk, but from the 
printed page. The voter who cannot read a newspaper or 
the election address of a candidate is ill-equipped for voting. 
But the real question is not whether illiteracy disqualifies, 
but to what extent literacy qualifies. How far does the abil- 
ity to read and write go towards civic competence ? Because 
it is the only test practically available, we assume it to be an 
adequate test. Is it really so ? Some of us remember among 
the English rustics of sixty years ago shrewd men unable to 
read, but with plenty of mother wit, and by their strong 
sense and solid judgment quite as well qualified to vote as are 
their grandchildren to-day who read a newspaper and revel 
in the cinema. The first people who ever worked popular 
government, working it by machinery more complicated than 
ours, had no printed page to learn from. Athenian voters 
who sat all through a scorching summer day listening to the 
tragedies of Euripides, and Syracusan voters who gave good 
treatment to those of their Athenian captives who could re- 
cite passages from those tragedies, whereof Syracuse pos- 
sessed no copies, were better fitted for civic functions than 
most of the voters in modern democracies. These Greek 



72 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

voters learnt their politics not from the printed, and few 
even from any written page, but by listening to accomplished 
orators and by talking to one another. Talking has this ad- 
vantage over reading, that in it the mind is less passive. It 
is thinking that matters, not reading, and by Thinking I 
mean the power of getting at Facts and arguing consecutively 
from them. In conversation there is a clash of wits, and to 
that some mental exertion must go. The Athenian voters, 
chatting as they walked away in groups from the Assembly, 
talked over the speeches. They had been made to feel that 
there were two sides to every question, and they argued these 
with one another. Socrates, or some eager youth who had 
been listening to Protagoras or Gorgias, overtook them on 
the way, and started fresh points for discussion. This was 
political education. But in these days of ours reading has 
become a substitute for thinking. The man who reads only 
the newspaper of his own party, and reads its political in- 
telligence in a medley of other stuff, narratives of crimes and 
descriptions of football matches, need not know that there is 
more than one side to a question, and seldom asks if there is 
one, nor what is the evidence for what the paper tells him. 
The printed page, because it seems to represent some un- 
known power, is believed more readily than what he hears in 
talk. He takes from it statements, perhaps groundless, per- 
haps invented, which he would not take from one of his fel- 
lows in the workshop or the counting-house. Moreover the 
Tree of Knowledge is the Tree of the Knowledge of Evil as 
well as of Good. On the printed page Truth has no better 
chance than Falsehood, except with those who read widely 
and have the capacity of discernment. A party organ, sup- 
pressing some facts, misrepresenting others, is the worst of 
all guides, because it can by incessantly reiterating untruth 
produce a greater impression than any man or body of men, 
save only ecclesiastics clothed with a spiritual authority, 
could produce before printing was invented. A modern 
voter so guided by his party newspapers is no better off than 
his grandfather who eighty years ago voted at the bidding of 
his landlord or his employer or (in Ireland) of his priest. 
The grandfather at least knew whom he was following, while 
the grandson, who reads only what is printed on one side of 
a controversy, may be the victim of selfish interests who own 



chap, vm DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 73 

the organs which his simplicity assumes to express public 
opinion or to have the public good at heart. So a democ- 
racy that has been taught only to read, and not also to reflect 
and judge, will not be the better for the ability to read. 
That impulse to hasty and ill-considered action which was 
the besetting danger of ruling assemblies swayed by orators, 
will reappear in the impression simultaneously produced 
through the press on masses of men all over a large country. 

These considerations have a significance for European 
democracies only so far as they suggest the need for carry- 
ing education in politics much further than most of them 
have yet carried it. But in countries hitherto ruled by abso- 
lute monarchs, like China or Russia, or by a foreign power, 
like India or the Philippine Isles, countries in which the 
experiment of representative government is now about to be 
tried, those who try the experiment will do well to enquire 
what the prospect is that ability to read will carry with it 
the ability to participate in government. Will elementary 
schools started among the Filipinos qualify them for the in- 
dependence promised after some twenty years of further 
tutelage ? Will the now illiterate inhabitants of British In- 
dia be better fitted to cast their votes, whenever the suffrage 
may be extended to them, by being enabled to read, far more 
widely than now, newspapers published in their vernaculars ? 
In Russia, a nearer and more urgent case, where the experi- 
ment of press freedom would have been instructive, it was not 
tried, for the censorship exercised by the Czardom was 
promptly re-established in a more stringent form by the Bol- 
shevists who suppressed all newspapers but their own. No 
one doubts that in all these countries the sooner elementary 
education is provided the better: but how soon will it begin 
to tell for good in politics ? 

Here is one set of reasons to shake the faith that reading 
and the habit of reading are enough to make men good citi- 
zens of a democracy. Now let us hear another set of sceptics 
who bid us go from the children that leave a village school at 
thirteen to the " upper " or educated classes, and enquire 
from an observation of their minds and conduct whether po- 
litical capacity increases in proportion to knowledge. There 
are those who ask whether experience has shown that educa- 
tion helps men to political wisdom. "If it does " — so they 



74 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS p^t i 

argue — " we should find that when in some political dispute 
the majority of the so-called educated classes have been found 
on one side, and the bulk of the less educated on the other, 
the judgments and forecasts of the more educated were 
usually approved by the result. But has this in fact hap- 
pened? Has not the untutored instinct of the masses been 
frequently vindicated by the event against the pretensions of 
the class which thinks itself superior ? Take English history 
during the nineteenth century, and mark in how many cases 
the working men gave their sympathy to causes which i So- 
ciety ' frowned upon, and which subsequent events proved 
to have deserved that sympathy. What outworn prejudices, 
what foolish prophecies, what wild counsels may be heard 
from the lips of the rich I What ridiculous calumnies against 
political opponents have been greedily swallowed in the fash- 
ionable circles of Paris and London ! What narrow views 
have been expressed even by brilliant writers and accom- 
plished teachers or divines! High attainments in some 
branch of science or learning are compatible with crass igno- 
rance and obstinate perversity where practical issues are 
involved. Heraclitus Baid Long ago, ' Much knowledge does 
not teach wisdom.' ] Have not associations of working men 
been more often right in their political judgment of measures 
than college common rooms and military clubs? The in- 
stincts of the multitude are as likely to be right afl the theories 
of the learned." 

These two sets of criticisms seem worth stating, for ex- 
travagant estimates of the benefits to be expected from the 
diffusion of education need to be corrected by a little reflec- 
tion on the hard facts of the case. But they do not affect 
the general proposition that knowledge is better than igno- 
rance. The elementary school may do little to qualify four 
children out of five for his duty as a voter. But the fifth 
child, the child with an active mind, has gained much, and it. 
is he who will influence others. The rich man, or the highly 
trained man of science, may be — and often is — a purblind 
politician, but that is the result of partisanship or class preju- 
dice, not of knowledge, without which partisanship and class 
selfishness would be even commoner than they are. 

And now we may return to ask, with moderated hopes, 

i Uo\vfxa9lrj v6ov oi) 5i5d<TKet. 






chap, vra DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 75 

What can education do in the way of making good citi- 



zens 



Philosophers, and among them some of the greatest, have 
dwelt much upon and expected much from the formation of 
political habits by instruction and training. Plato, the earli- 
est whose thoughts on the subject have come down to us, and 
indeed Greek thinkers generally, had an ethical as well as a 
political aim, wishing the State to elevate and maintain at a 
high standard the character of its members for the preserva- 
tion of internal peace as well as for strength in war. Their 
favourite example of what training could do was drawn from 
Sparta, though they saw the hard narrowness of the char- 
acter it produced. The idea, which in the Middle Ages had 
been lost except in so far as it was left in the keeping of the 
Church, was frequently revived by modern theorists while 
ignored by practical men, till in onr own days the example of 
Japan reawakened a sense of what may be accomplished by 
the persistent inculcation of certain beliefs, and showed how 
the long-cherished traditions of a nation may make its mem- 
bers prefer death to any deviation from the accepted code of 
personal honour and national duty. Still more recently in 
another country the diffusion of a militaristic spirit and the 
wide acceptance of theories which place the State above 
morality — theories proceeding from a few forcible teachers 
and writers and seconded by the success which had attended 
their application in war — have exemplified the power of a 
system of doctrines when glorified by the small ruling class 
and accepted by nearly all of the more cultivated classes of a 
great nation. These results are in both instances attributable 
at least as much to Tradition and Authority as to school in- 
struction, the former repeating through life the maxims de- 
livered in early years. If we can imagine a free people to 
have all but unanimously agreed on certain principles of faith 
and practice, and to require every school to teach them, as 
Rousseau thought that his State should have a civic religion 
with a civic creed to be enforced, on pain of expulsion, upon 
those who did not believe it, such a people might succeed in 
establishing a political orthodoxy which would stand for cen- 
turies, just as the Inquisition established a theological ortho- 
doxy in Spain which lasted from the days of Ferdinand and 
Isabella till Napoleon's invasion. Each generation growing 



76 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

up in the same unquestioned belief would impose unques- 
tioning acceptance on the next. In our day, when every be- 
lief is everywhere contested, and intercourse between nations 
is unprecedentedly active, this may seem impossible, but an 
Ice Age may await the mind of man, as ice ages have from 
time to time descended upon his dwelling-place. 

Assuming, as may safely be assumed (for it is done with 
success in Switzerland) that some service can be rendered by 
instilling in early years an interest in civic functions and a 
knowledge of their nature, 1 let us ask what sort of instruction 
is possible: (a) in the Elementary Schools; (b) in the Sec- 
ondary Schools; and (c) in the Universities? 

(a) In schools where pupils remain till about fourteen 
years of age everything depends on the teacher. To most 
boys of thirteen, such terms as constitutions, ministries, par- 
liaments, borough councils and voting qualifications are mere 
abstractions, meaning nothings because the things which the 
names denote are outside the boy's knowledge. Text-books 
are of little UB p( in furnishing a syllabus which will 

help the teacher in his effortB to explain in familiar language, 
and by constant illustrations, what government doei mean. 
To do even this successfully implies a skill not always found. 
Most teachers need to be taught how they should teach such 
a subject. 

(6) In Secondary Schools and evening Classes for older 
pupils more may be done. As the school curriculum in- 
cludes history, the origin of representative institutions may 
be explained, and the QOUXSe <>f their development, in coun- 
tries like Britain and the United States may be outlined. 
Attention may be called to passing events, such as elections, 
which show how institutions are actually worked. Even the 
elements of economics may be added, such as the principle of 
the division of labour, the nature of money as a medium of 
exchange, and the arguments for and against Free Trade. 
The difficulty which inevitably recurs, that of dealing with 

i " Civisme " is taught in the Swiss schools, the book most used being 
the Manuel dc Droit Civi(pic of the late M. Nuina Dm/,, famous among 
the Presidents of the Confederation for his calm wisdom. In most of 
the American States the subject is regularly taught, with special refer- 
ence to the Federal Constitution, and something, though not much, has 
been done in the same direction in Great Britain. In France the teacher 
in the public elementary schools is a mainstay of the Republican party, 
relied upon to combat the influence of the parish priest. 



chap, vm DEMOCKACY AND EDUCATION 77 

matters which have little reality or " content " to one who has 
not yet come into contact with them in actual life, can be 
reduced, if not surmounted, by a conversational treatment 
enlivened by constant illustrations. 

(c) When we come to the Universities a wider field opens. 
Here there are students of high intelligence, some of whom 
will in after life be leaders, helping to form and guide pub- 
lic opinion. As they already possess a knowledge of the con- 
crete facts of politics, they can use books and can follow 
abstract reasonings. They discuss the questions of the hour 
with one another. The living voice of the teacher who can 
treat of large principles and answer questions out of his 
stores of knowledge, can warn against the fallacies that lurk 
in words, can explain the value of critical methods, and, 
above all, can try to form the open and truth-loving mind, 
is of inestimable value. In times when class strife is threat- 
ened there is a special Deed for thinkers and speakers able to 
rise above class interests and class prejudices. Men can best 
acquire wide and Impartial views in the years of youth, before 
they become entangled in parly affiliations or business con- 
nections. The place fittest to form such views is a place 
dedicated to the higher Learning and to the pursuit of truth. 
Universities render a real service, to popular government by 
giving to men whose gifts fit them for leadership that power 
of distinguishing the essential from the accidental and of 
being the master instead of the servant of formulas which it 
is the business of philosophy to form, and that comprehen- 
sion of what the Past has bequeathed to us by which history 
helps us to envisage the Present with a view to the Future. 

Lest it be supposed that in dwelling on the value of highly 
educated leaders I am forgetting the qualities needed among 
the mass of the citizens, let me say a word about the country 
in which that mass had shown itself most competent. What 
have been the causes of the success of democracy in Switzer- 
land ? Not merely the high level of intelligence among the 
people and the attention paid to the teaching of civic duty, 
but the traditional sense of that duty in all classes and, even 
more distinctly, the long practice in local self-government. 
Knowledge and practice have gone hand in hand. Swiss con- 
ditions cannot be reproduced elsewhere, but the example in- 
dicates the direction which the efforts of other democracies 



78 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

may take. The New England States of the North American 
Union, till they were half submerged by a flood of foreign 
immigrants, taught the same moral. Trained by local self- 
government to recognize their duty to their small communi- 
ties, the citizens interested themselves in the business of the 
State and acquired familiarity with its needs by constant 
discussion among themselves, reading the speeches and watch- 
ing the doings of their leaders. Not many were competent 
to judge the merits of the larger questions of policy debated 
in the National legislature. But they learnt to know and 
judge men. They saw that there are always two sides to a 
question. They knew what they were about w T hen they went 
to the polls. Valuing honesty and courage, they were not the 
prey of demagogues. It is because such conditions as those 
of Switzerland and early Massachusetts cannot be secured 
in large modern cities that it becomes all the more necessary 
to try what systematic teaching can do to make up for the 
want of constant local practice. 

The conclusions which this chapter is meant to suggest 
may be summed up as follows: 

Though the education of the citizens is indispensable to a 
democratic government, the extent to which a merely elemen- 
tary instruction fits them to work such a government has been 
overestimated. Reading is merely a gate leading into the 
field of knowledge. Or we may call it an implement which 
the hand can use for evil, or for good, or leave unused. 

Knowledge is one only among the things which go to the 
making of a good citizen. Public spirit and honesty are even 
more needful. 

If the practical test of civic capacity in individuals or 
classes be found in voting for the best men and supporting 
the best measures, i.e. the measures which ultimate results 
approve, the masses may be found to have in some countries 
acquitted themselves as well as what arc called the educated 
classes. 

Attainments in learning and science do little to make men 
wise in politics. Some eminent scientific men have been 
in this respect no wiser than their undergraduate pupils. 
There have been countries in which the chiefs of public serv- 
ices and the professors in Universities were prominent in the 
advocacy of policies which proved disastrous. 






chap, vm DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION 79 

The habit of local self-government is the best training for j y- 
democratic government in a nation. Practice is needed to 
vivify knowledge. 

The diffusion of education among backward races such as 
the Filipinos or the African Bantu tribes, or even among the 
ignorant sections of civilized peoples, such as the Russian 
peasantry, or the Chinese, or the Indian ryots, will not, de- 
sirable as it is, necessarily qualify them to work a democratic 
government, and may even make it more difficult to work in 
its earlier stages. 

These conclusions (if well founded) may damp hopes, but 
must not discourage action. Instruction must be provided, 
in civilized and uncivilized countries, and the more of it the 
better, for every man must have his chance of turning to the 
best account whatever capacity Nature has given him, and of 
enjoying all the pleasure the exercise of his faculties can 
afford. This will doubtless work out for good in political 
as well as in other fields of effort. The seed of education 
will ultimately yield a harvest in the field of politics, though 
the grain may be slow in ripening. 



CHAPTER IX 

DEMOCRACY AND RELIGION 

Whoever tries to describe popular government as it is now 
and has been in the past, cannot pass over in silence the 
strongest of all the forces by which governments have been 
affected. The influence of religion springs from the deepest 
sources in man's nature. It is always present. It tells upon 
the multitude even more than it does upon the ruling, or the 
most educated, class. When roused, it can overpower con- 
siderations of personal interest, and triumph over the fear of 
death itself. 

A history of the relations of the spiritual power to the 
secular during the last eighteen centuries would distinguish 
two things, essentially different, but apt to be confused in 
thought because generally intertwined in fact. One is Re- 
ligion, i.e. the religious sentiment as it exists in the mind, dis- 
posing those who think and feel alike about man's relation to 
the Unseen Powers to the recognition of a special tie of sym- 
pathy, but not taking concrete form in association for any 
purpose save that of common worship. The other is Ecclesi- 
asticism, that is to say, some form of religious doctrine solidi- 
fied in institutions and practices, and especially in the organ- 
ization in one body of those who hold the same faith, in order 
that they may not only worship together but act together. 
This action may be for various purposes, some of which are 
connected with the secular life, though helping to subserve 
the spiritual life also. Ecclesiasticism has appeared in divers 
forms. A caste system, such as existed in ancient Egypt and 
still exists in India, is one. 1 Another is a religious order, 
such as those which have been so powerful in the Roman 
Church. But the most important form is that we call a 

i There are Dervish fraternities among the Muslims, and organized 
sects such as the Senussi of North-East Africa have sometimes risen to 
importance. 

80 



chap, ix DEMOCKACY AND RELIGION 81 

Church, a body of persons organized and disciplined as a 
community, on the basis of a common belief, whose officials 
constitute a government obeyed within the community and 
able to make itself felt by those without. 

Infinitely varying have been the relations between the 
Church and the State, nor has any really satisfactory solu- 
tion of the difficulties created by their rival claims been ever 
discovered. Wherever contractual relations or questions of 
property are involved, there is contact and there may be con- 
flict. We are here concerned only with one small branch of 
this vast subject, viz. the force which religions or churches 
have exerted either in aiding and developing and colouring, 
or in condemning and opposing, the democratic spirit in gen- 
eral or any particular democratic governments. 

In the ancient world religions did not embody themselves 
in churches, though there were priests and sometimes priestly 
castes, and the priest could be a potent figure. A profound 
difference between that ancient world and ours lay in the fact 
that in it all religions were mutually compatible, so that a 
polytheist, while primarily bound to worship the gods of his 
own country, might worship those of other countries also. 
All alike were deemed able to help their worshippers and 
defend against its enemies the nation that worshipped them, 
thus requiring its devotion. The first people that claimed 
exclusive reality and wide-stretching power for its own Deity 
was Israel, though no particular time can be fixed as that 
when it attained to the conception of Jehovah as the one and 
only true God. The first rulers who tried to enforce by 
persecution conformity to their own religious usages were 
the Sassanid kings of Persia, who, being fire-worshippers, for- 
bade their Christian subjects, and doubtless other non- 
Zoroastrian subjects also, either to bury or to burn the bodies 
of the dead, these modes of interment being to them a desecra- 
tion of Fire or of Earth. The first form of worship pre- 
scribed by law and enforced by penalties was the worship of 
the Eoman Emperor, or rather of his " Genius " or protect- 
ing spirit. Having begun as a voluntary manifestation of 
loyal devotion to the reigning sovereign, this worship became 
general in the Eastern provinces, and was used as a test to be 
applied to persons suspected of being Christians, whenever the 

emperor, or some local governor, chose to put in force the 
VOL. i G 



82 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

laws which forbade Christianity as an " illicit superstition." ' 
Impartial between religious beliefs, the Emperors feared the 
Christians partly because they were a secret society, partly 
because, " looking to another kingdom, that is, a heavenly," 
they stood apart from the general body of Rome's subjects. 
They did not, however, even when persecuted, attempt to 
resist or overthrow the temporal sovereign, continuing to pro- 
test their civil loyalty to him who was, albeit a pagan, the 
Power ordained of God. 

The ancient polytheisms need not further concern us, 
though religious passion often played a part in Greek politics ; 
and a few sentences may suffice for the faiths which hear the 
names of Buddha (Sakvamuni) and Mohammed, since in no 
people professing either has the rule of the people ever been 
established. Buddhism is compatible with any form of gov- 
ernment, and though it has (contrary to its essential princi- 
ples), given rise to war-, it has not favoured any particular 
form. In Tibet it developed a strong hierarchy, and became 
practically a State as well as a Church, presenting singular 
resemblances to the Catholic hierarchy as it stood in the days 
of Popes Gregory VI I. and Innocent III. Islam, spe- 
cially interesting to the lawyer as Buddhism is to the student 
of philosophy, is a State no less than a Church. The Sacred 
Law (like that of the Pentateuch) regulates civil relations 
as well as those we should call religious ; and ancient Muslim 
custom assumes a Commander of the Faithful, or Khalif, a 
leader, not a sacred person, nor invested with spiritual author- 
ity, but entitled to respect and to some undefined and un- 
definable measure of obedience as the successor of the Prophet, 
so long as he himself observes the Faith and enforces the 
Sacred Law. 1 All who hold that faith are equal in civil 
rights, and in a sense socially equal. Political rights are a 
different matter, but there seems to be nothing (unless it be 

i The interdiction of human sacrifices among the Celts of Gaul was 
due not to hostility to Druidical beliefs but to motives of humanity. 

2 The word means " successor or representative." According to the 
old orthodox doctrine, the Khalif must belong to the tribe of the Koreish, 
and must be in control of the sacred cities, Mecca and Medina. Since 
the fall <>f the Abbasside Khalifato at Bagdad, the office DOI 
scarcely any political importance till Abdul Hamid II., whose prede- 
cessor Selim I. had obtained it from the helpless Fatimite Khalif of 
Egypt, began to employ it as a means of increasing his influence out- 
side Turkey. 



ohap. ix DEMOCRACY AND RELIGION 83 

the conception of the Khalifate) to prevent Muslims from 
trying the experiment of a republic. 

We return to Christianity as the religion which, claiming 
to be universal, necessarily addressed itself to the conversion 
of all mankind, though at first only by methods of pacific per- 
suasion. When it became the official religion of the Roman 
world it received the support of the State, and recognized the 
authority of the Emperor, by whom the first six great General 
Councils were convoked. It had of course nothing to do with 
approving or disapproving any form of government, nor was 
popular government so much as dreamt of. 

After a thousand years there came in the eleventh century 
that great controversy between the secular and the spiritual 
power in which modern political thought had its beginnings. 
The Emperors Henry IV., Henry V., and Frederick I. in 
Italy and Germany, and the Kings of England, William the 
Conqueror, his two sons and his great-grandson Henry II. 
found their authority disputed by the Popes from Gregory 
VII. onwards. The question at issue was not one of popular 
rights, but between two kinds of monarchy, the ecclesiastical 
power and the civil power, the former claiming an authority 
higher, because exercised over the immortal soul and so 
reaching forward into the future state, whereas the power of 
the temporal monarch was only over the body and ended with 
this life. The Popes claimed, and sometimes put in force, 
the right to absolve subjects from allegiance to heretical or 
schismatic or disobedient sovereigns. Archbishops, like the 
pious and gentle Anselm and the haughty Thomas of Canter- 
bury, both received the halo of sainthood for defending the 
spiritual against the secular power. In this controversy, 
although the kings and most of the feudal nobility stood on 
one side while most of the Italian republics stood on the other, 
maintaining, with the blessing of the Pope, their rights of 
practical self-government, no distinctively democratic prin- 
ciples were involved, yet the institution of the priesthood was 
an assertion of human equality, for every ordained priest was, 
as a duly commissioned minister of God, the equal of any 
temporal potentate, and in one respect his superior, since 
able to dispense sacraments necessary to salvation. As the 
rule of celibacy saved the priesthood from becoming a heredi- 
tary caste, it was not, like the hereditary priestly and war- 



84 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

rior castes in Egypt and India, an oligarchic institution ; and 
less than ever so after the creation in the thirteenth century 
of the two great mendicant Orders, Dominicans and Fran- 
ciscans, which sprang from and had great power with the 
masses of the people. 

When in the sixteenth century the Reformers claimed for 
all Christians freedom of opinion and worship, the revolt 
became one against both temporal and spiritual monarchy. 
" Call no man master," neither the king nor the Pope, nor 
even the whole Church, speaking through a General Council. 
To meet this protest against authority, and to prop up king- 
ship, the doctrine of Divine Right was invented, partly as a 
device for transferring to the secular monarch that sort of 
headship of a National Church which Henry VIII. assumed 
in England, partly by thinkers who, feeling the need for 
some sanction to civil authority, argued that whoever is al- 
lowed by God to rule de facto should, at least after a time, be 
recognized as ruling de jure. This theory, challenged both 
by the Jesuits, who asserted the right of subjects to overthrow 
or kill heretical princes condemned by the Pope, and by those 
Protestants who carried to their logical development the prin- 
ciples of the Reformation, became al Last ridiculous. Its 

dying echoes were heard in the Coronation speeches of William 

I. of Prussia and his unfortunate grandson, 

Calvin, the most constructive mind among the Reformers, 

set himself to replace the Papal and hierarchical system by 
erecting in Geneva a theocratic scheme of government in close 

alliance with the State. Each Christian community was to 
elect its ministers and elders, who were to rule through a 
Consistory, exercising certain powers in civil matters. His 
disciples developed this into a frame of representative church 

government, the locally elected ministers and elders choosing 
others to represent them in larger governing assemblies. 
This system, which spread to, and has maintained itself in 
Presbyterian churches all over the world, became a political 
force in England and still more effectively in Scotland. It 
was, however, republican rather than democratic, nor was 
Calvin himself disposed to trust the multitude. 1 

i Calvin observed that it was a vain thing to dispute as to the best 
form of political Institutions; circumstances must determine that. Htf 
own preference was for a well-tempered liberty under a wise oligarchy. 
I quote from Hasbach, p. 2 and note. 



chap, ix DEMOCRACY AND RELIGION 85 

The first proclamation of democratic theories in modern 
countries, if we omit occasional outbursts in the Italian cities 
and in Germany during the Eeformation excitements, the 
most notable among which was that of the Westphalian Ana- 
baptists, came with the Independents (themselves partly in- 
fluenced by Anabaptist notions) during the English Civil 
War. How the ideas of the English Puritans were carried 
to New England, how they were developed among the Amer- 
ican insurgents at the time of the Revolutionary War, how 
from America they affected the French mind, already stirred 
by the writings of Rousseau, all these things are too familiar 
to need description. Christianity itself, however, either in 
its Roman or its Protestant form, wag never involved. That 
anti-religious, or at least anti-Christian, character which has 
marked revolutionary movements on the European Continent 
is due to the enmity felt towards highly secularized State 
Churches as a part of the established political order which 
had become odious. Men remembered the persecutions they 
had prompted, and contrasted the lives of not a few prelates, 
holders of richly endowed offices, with the precepts they were 
supposed to teach. The intellectual reawakening and moral 
reformation of the Roman Church in France have not re- 
moved this antagonism, because that Church was long the sup- 
porter of monarchy and still exerts a power outside the State 
which advanced Republicans denounce as Clericalism. The 
same thing has happened in Italy and Spain, in Spanish and 
Portuguese America, and to some slight extent even in some 
Protestant countries. Everywhere in proportion as the 
Church, more or less completely secularized, was despotic and 
persecuting, just in that proportion was dislike of it more 
bitter. Spanish and Italian anarchists show a specially fero- 
cious hostility to Catholicism as well as to the established 
order of society. Identifying Christianity with capitalism, 
the Russian and German disciples of Karl Marx display a 
similarly aggressive antagonism, while in France the alliance 
between the Roman Church and Louis Napoleon served to 
exacerbate the old anti-clerical sentiment of the Republicans. 
In English-speaking countries there has been no such hostility. 
Democrats and Socialists are there no less and no more Chris- 
tians than other citizens. The associations, at one time or 
another, of Christian Churches with monarchies or oligarchies 



86 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

or popular republics have been due to what some have called 
" the accidents of history," to external causes rather than 
to essential principles, and they need not affect our view of 
the true relations, whatever these may bo, between forms of 
faith and forms of government. 

As in our own time, however, parties have arisen which 
call themselves Christian Socialists, while some who do not 
use that name have argued that Socialism is a legitimate 
development from the teaching of the Gospels, it is worth 
while to examine whether any such connection exists. 

If the aims of Socialism and Communism be defined as 
being the establishment of a greater equality of economic con- 
ditions and the extinction of suffering dne to poverty, these 
arc ends which Christianity also seeks. But the means by 
which it would attain these ends are different from those 

which any political party has advocated. The renunciation 
or abolition of private property is not inculcated in the New 

Testament, although some of the first believers, in the pas- 
sionate exaltation of their new S6O8C of hrotherhood, had all 
things in common. 1 Communist politicians propose to carry 

out their programmes (whatever form these may take) by 
law, Le. by the compulsive power of the State using physical 
force. The Gospel contemplate- quite other means of better- 
ing human BOciety. It appeals to the sympathy and con- 
science of the individual, bidding him love his neighbour as 
himself, and, since he Lfl hound to rejoice in his neighbour's 
happiness equally with his OWU, to treat his neighbour, not 
as a competitor, but as a partner Off a brother, giving to him 
freely all he needs. In a Christian society regulated by these 
principles there would be no need for the various organs of 
State action, for an army, or a navy, or courts of law, or 
police, nor would there be any State relief of poverty, because 
relief would already have been voluntarily effected by private 

benevolence. 1 fader the conditions of such a society the State 
would in fact be superfluous, except as an organization for 
devising and carrying out a variety of purposes beneficial 

to all, such as the construction of public works and the pres- 
ervation of public health. It need hardly be added, for this 
follows from what has been said already, that there is noth- 
ing in the New Testament to require a Christian to be or not 
i Acts of the Apostles, iv. .T2. 



chap, ix DEMOCRACY AND RELIGION 87 

to be a political Socialist, nothing either to dissuade or to 
recommend the use of State power to effect social or economic 
reforms. If it is sought to effect those reforms by legal com- 
pulsion methods, that is a matter for the State which has its 
own means and methods. 

Some have complained that in the Gospel precepts for the 
conduct of life there is no reference to public or civic duties, 
unless it be in the Baying " Render unto Caesar the things 
that are Caesar's." But the answer or explanation seems to 
be, not only that any such precepts would have been inap- 
plicable (if indeed intelligible) to men living in the political 
conditions of those to whom the Gospel was first preached, 
but also that they would have been superfluous. Had Chris- 
tianity been put in practice, forms of government would have 

mattered little. 

I hit Christianity never has been put in practice. Even 

that precept which it might have Beemed comparatively easy 
to observe - the avoidance of war between ( !hristians — was 

entirely disregarded. Whatever was the original meaning 
of the saving "I am come to send not peace hut a -word," 
one of those many dicta in the Gospels whose true sense re- 
mains doubtful, the prophecy was fatally fulfilled, for many 
wars have sprung from religion, and wars have been as fre- 
quent between so-called Christian States as ever they were 
between those heathen States which Augustine held to be the 
offspring of sin. 

This brief survey may suffice to show that the relation of 
the Christian Church or Churches to the State has varied 
from people to people and from age to age according to local 
circumstances and transitory issues. Many were the attempts 
from time to time to represent Christianity as the natural 
bulwark of some set of political doctrines, or to draw the 
Church into an alliance with the party that professed them. 
Monarchy and Democracy alternately, or both at the same 
moment, made bids for ecclesiastical support. Theologians 
or statesmen appealed to the Bible as favouring the views 
they propounded. Monarchists and democrats could equally 
well do so, for there were plenty of texts for both to cite. 
In England High Churchmen like Laud and Sheldon main- 
tained the divine right of kings by quoting the passages in 
the book of Samuel which refer to Saul the king of Israel as 



88 GE1STERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

the Lord's anointed, but the Puritans and the Jesuits alike 
could counter them by references to the deposition of San! 
by the prophet acting under the direction of Jehovah. Every 
one can find in the Christian Scriptures what s, be- 

cause those books are not, like the Koran, the product of any 
one mind or time but of eight centuries, and record not only 
events and the words of men. but also the emergence and 
growth of ideas and beliefs slowly developed in the long 
life of a people which has contributed more than any other to 
the religious thought of mankind. The habit of trying to 
apply to current politics Isolated dicta meant for other con- 
ditions has now passed away. \o party resorts to an arsenal 
which provides weapons equally available for all. 

But though, as we have seen, none <>f the great religions has 
any natural or necessary affinity to any particular form of 
gover n ment, there are still ways in which religion, or an eccle- 

Biastica] body, can affect the OOUrse of political events. Such 

an organization can unite with and intensify racial or national 
or party passion. When strong enough to command the 
obedience of its own members, it can strengthen by its alli- 
ance ;i secular government or a political party. A glance at 
the world of to-day Bhows thai although ecclesiastical influ- 
ences on politic- are Blighter than formerly, they still exi^t. 1 

In Russia the Orthodox Church of the East may, though she 
failed to stem the Bolshevik tide in \'.>]~. prove to bav< 
tained pari of that power over the peasantry and the middle 
class which seemed immense ten years age In Canada, Aus- 
tralia, and Ireland, in Belgium and Holland and Switzer- 
land, the support of Roman bishops and priests count* 
something in elections. In Prance the Church is the pillar 
of the conservative Right; in Germany it has furnished the 
foundation of a considerable political party. It La in English- 
speakimr countries only thai the Roman Church has frankly 
embraced democratic principles, declaring thai she has no 
complaint against popular government, and confining her 
action to educational questions. 

What, then, is the relation to democracy of the fundamental 
of the Gospel 1 Four ideas are of special significance, 

1 In Japan an attempt wai recently made to revive, as againsl foreign 
Influences, the declining power oi Buddhisl worship, in [ndia there an 

agitators who appeal to Muslim sentiment or Hindu .sentiment for 1he 
purposes of their political propaganda. 



chap, ix DEMOCRACY AND RELIGION 89 

The worth of the individual man is enhanced as a being 
to whom the Creator has given an immortal soul, and who is 
the object of His continuing care. 

In that Creator's sight the souls of all His human creatures 
are of like worth. All alike need redemption and are to be 
redeemed. " In Christ there is neither barbarian nor Scyth- 
ian, bond nor free." 

Supremely valuable is the inner life of the soul in its rela- 
tion to the Deity. " The kingdom of Heaven is within you." 

It is the duty of all God's creatures to love one another, 
and form thereby a brotherhood of worshippers. 

The firsl of these idea- implies spiritual liberty, the obli- 
gation to obey Cod (who Bpeaks directly to the believer's 
heart) rather than man. It is freedom of conscience. 

The second implies human equality, in respect not of in- 
tellectual or moral capacity hut of ultimate worth in the eyes 
of the ( Ireator, and it points to the equal " right of all men to 
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." 

The third idea, expressed in those precepts which bid the 
Christian to live, with a pure heart, in close communion with 
God, and the fourth which implies the creation of a Christian 
community, cannot hut affect a man's attitude to life in the 
world, and may influence it in one of two ways. Absorption 
in the inner life may tend to individualism, engendering a 
Quietism or isolated mysticism. On the other hand, the idea 
of a Christian brotherhood of worship points to the value of 
the collective life and may dispose men to submission in mat- 
ters of faith and a merging of their own wills in the will of 
the community. 

Either of these principles, taken alone, may be pushed to 
an extreme. He who regards the welfare of his own soul 
may neglect his social and political duties, may passively en- 
dure tyranny, or may withdraw, like the early Christian 
hermits, into the desert. On the other hand, the gathering of 
the individual worshippers into a community which almost 
inevitably passes into an organization, may build up a hier- 
archy which will sacrifice liberty to orthodoxy and become a 
worldly power. Each of these tendencies was pushed very 
far, and each has exposed Christianity to censure. Voltaire 
attacked it as an aggressive and persecuting force, inimical 
to freedom, yet also a troublesome rival to well-ordered civil 



90 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

government. Rousseau attacked it as an anti-social influence 
which, in detaching men from the life of this world and turn- 
ing their hopes to another, made them neglectful of civic duty. 
The one thought it dangerous as a stimulant, the other as a 
narcotic. 

If we regard the essential quality of Christianity rather 
than the errors and corruptions which led men to neglect or 
pervert its teachings, if we fix our minds not so much on its 
direct action upon events in history as upon the ideas it con- 
tained which affected the course of events, we shall find its 
influence to have been operative in two respects chiefly. It 
implanted the conception of a spiritual freedom prepared 
when necessary to defy physical force. The sentence, " We 
must obey God rather than men," x went echoing down the 
ages, strengthening the heart of many a man accused for 
his opinions. It created a sentiment of equality between men 
— all alike sinful beings, yet also all worth saving from the 
power of sin — which restrained the degrading idolatry of 
power which had existed under Asiatic despotisms. The 
greatest king was a sinner no less than the humblest subject, 
and might, as a sinner, be resisted and, if the need arose, de- 
posed. These ideas, which from time to time broke through 
the crust of monarchical tradition in the Middle Ages, became 
potent factors among the Protestants in the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries, wherever monarchs stood opposed to the 
principles of the Reformers. 

In the political as in the moral sphere the fundamental 
ideas of the Gospel have effected much, yet how much less 
than was expected by those who first felt their purifying and 
vitalizing power. That power sank lowest just when it had 
secular authority most fully at its disposal. The more the 
Church identified itself with the world, the further did it 
depart from its own best self. The Church expected or pro- 
fessed to Christianize the world, but in effect the world secu- 
larized the Church. The Kingdom of Heaven became an 
Ecclesiastical State. Such victories as Christian principles 
have from time to time won in the unending strife of good 
and evil have been won by their inherent moral force, never 
through earthly weapons. Neither Voltaire nor Rousseau 
saw that the belief in " life and immortality brought to light 
i Acts of the Apostles, v. 29. 



chap, ix DEMOCRACY AND RELIGION 91 

through the Gospel " may vivify a man's higher impulses and 
give a new worth and force to all the work he can do under 
the sun. 

The teachings of the Gospel live and move and have their 
heing in a plane of their own. The values they reveal and 
exalt are values for the soul, not to be measured by earthly 
standards. Their influence is not institutional but spiritual. 
It has nothing to do with governments, but looks forward to a 
society in which law and compulsion will have been replaced 
by goodwill and the sense of human brotherhood. However 
remote the prospect that such a society can be established on 
earth, the principles which that teaching inculcates are suffi- 
cient to guide conduct in every walk of life. He who does 
justice and loves mercy and seeks the good of others no less 
than his own will bring the right spirit to his public as well 
as his own private duties. If ever that spirit pervades a 
whole nation, it will be a Christian nation as none has ever 
yet been. 



CHAPTER X 

THE PRESS IN A DEMOCRACY 

It is the newspaper press that lias made democracy possible 
v in large countries. The political thinkers of antiquity as- 
sumed that a community of self-governing citizens could not 
be larger than one voice could reach, because only by the voice 
could discussion be carried on: and they might have added 
that only where the bulk of the citizens dwell near one another 
can they obtain by word of mouth the knowledge of political 
events thai is needed to make discussion intelligent and profit- 
able. Within the last hundred years the development of the 
* press has enabled news to be diffused and public discussion to 
be conducted over wide areas; and still more recently the 
electric telegraph has enabled news and the opinions of men 
regarding it to be bo quickly spread over a vast and populous 
country that all the citizens can receive both news and com- 
ments thereon at practically the same moment, so that argu- 
ment- or appeals addressed to the people work simultaneously 
upon their minds almost as effectively as did the voice of the 
orator in the popular assembly. 

Even before tlii> immense change had arrived, it had been 

recognized in all free countries that the function of diffusing 
news and arguments must be, in normal times, open to all 
persons, BO that every man may publish what he pleases, 
subject to whatever liability law may [mpose in respect of the 
misuse of this power. From the days of Milton, whose 
AreopagUica was the first great statement of the case for 
unlicensed printing, the friends of popular government have 
treated the freedom of the press as indispensable to its proper 
working, so much so that it has figured in nearly all the writ- 
ten constitutions of modern free States. The faith in popular 
government rested upon the old dictum: "Let the people 
have the truth and freedom to discuss it, and all will 
well " ( Fortis semper Veritas 1 ). A free press — so it was 

i " Truth abideth and is strong for ever: she livcth and conquerttfe 
for evermore" (I Esdras iv. 38). 

92 



chap, x THE PRESS IN A DEMOCRACY 93 

assumed — may be relied on to supply true facts because false 
facts will soon be discovered and discredited. Competition 
among those who know that the people desire the truth will 
enable truth to be discerned from falsehood. Free discussion 
will sift all statements. All arguments will be heard and 
canvassed. The people will know how to choose the sound 
and reject the unsound. They may be for a time misled, 
but general freedom will work out better than any kind of 
restraint. In free countries no one now impeaches the prin- 
ciple, whether or not he expects from it all it seems to promise. 
The liberty of the press remains an Ark of the Covenant in 
every democracy. 

To this let it be added that the press was earning the favour 
it received. During many years in which one country after 
another was striving to extort full self-government from mon- 
archs or oligarchies the press was one of the strongest forces 
on the popular side. It exposed oppression and corruption; 
it arraigned an arbitrary executive, denouncing its selfish or 
blundering policies; it helped the friends of liberty to rouse 
the masses. It won popular confidence and sympathy, be- 
cause it embodied and focussed the power of public opinion. 
Without it the victory of opinion over the armed force of gov- 
ernments could not have been won. 

A time, however, arrived when difficulties and dangers pre- 
viously unforeseen came to light. It was perceived that the 
power of addressing large masses of men could be used in 
many ways and for many purposes. Two or three of these 
may be mentioned as illustrations. 

The old monarchies had possessed their official organs 
which set forth the facts — or falsehoods — to which it was 
desired to give currency, but these organs were generally dis- 
credited by their official character. Bismarck, if he did not 
invent, was the first who practised extensively and efficiently 
the practice of suborning newspapers not supposed to be con- 
nected with the government to propagate the statements and 
views he sought to foist upon the people. His so-called 
" Reptile Press " proved an effective engine for strengthen- 
ing his position, and set an example followed in other coun- 
tries. This method involved no restriction of press freedom, 
but the well-spring of truth was poisoned at its source. 

In countries long attached to the principles of liberty such 



94 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

as the United States and England some violent journalists 
were found advocating the assassination of rulers or states- 
men. Could this be permitted? Did the existence of a 
political motive justify incitement to murder? This ques- 
tion was answered in the United States by the conviction and 
punishment, nearly forty years ago, of Johann Most, a Ger- 
man anarchist. The murder, in 1901, of President Mc- 
Kinley, by a Polish anarchist, probably under the influence 
of literature suggesting the removal of the heads of States, 
gave further actuality to this issue. In a country which 
provides constitutional means for the redress of grievances, 
political assassination is an offence against democracy, and 
cannot plead the arguments used to justify tyrannicide in 
lauds ruled by tyrants. Will democracy allow itself to be 
stabbed in the back I 

In a different quarter another problem arose which showed 
how hard it is to apply, irrespective of special conditions, 
principles previously assumed to be of universal validity. 
British administrators in India were agreed, whatever their 
school of thought, in holding it unsafe to allow the same 
liberty to newspapers published in the native languages as 
might be allowed to all newspapers in Europe or North 
America. The absence of restrictions would enable un- 
scrupulous persons not only to disturb public order by false 
Statements, hard to track and refute, and by pernicious in- 
citement- addressed to ignorant minds, but also to extort 
money from individuals by methods of blackmailing, a de- 
vice peculiarly hurtful in a country where women are se- 
cluded. The ordinary penal law could not be effectively 
used to prevent these evils. Thus ;i people like the English, 
heartily democratic in sentiment, found itself unable to ap- 
ply to the vernacular Indian press its own cherished maxims. 
Cases like these — and others might be added — show that 
unlimited publicity, the life-blood of free government, may 
have its dangers, just as explosives, useful for mining and 
tunnelling, have been turned to the purposes of violent crime. 

( )ther things have happened in our time to shake the com- 
placent optimism which the growth of a cheap press had in- 
spired. With the growth of population in industrial cent] 
with the diffusion among all classes of the habit of reading, 
with the need for information on many new topics of inter- 



chap, x THE PRESS IN A DEMOCRACY 95 

est, newspapers began to be far more widely read, and as 
their circulation increased, so did the size of their daily and 
weekly issues, and the volume of their non-political mat- 
ter. So also did the pecuniary returns which, if successful, 
they brought in to their proprietors. They became lucrative 
business undertakings. Moreover, as most of their readers 
now belonged to a class with less education and less curiosity 
for what may be called the higher kinds of knowledge, and 
with more curiosity for the lower kinds, such as reports of 
sporting contests, fatal accidents, and above all, accounts of 
crimes and matrimonial troubles, there appeared in some 
countries newspapers of a new type which throve by the sup- 
port of this uninstructed, uncritical, and unfastidious mass 
of readers. Such papers, free from that restraint which the 
public opinion of the more educated class had hitherto im- 
posed, could play down to the tastes of the crowd and in- 
flame its passions or prejudices by invectives directed against 
other classes or against foreign nations, or by allegations and 
incitements the falsity of which few of its readers were quali- 
fied to discover. Since many in this less educated social 
stratum read newspapers of this type and no others, cur- 
rency could be given with impunity to misrepresentations and 
fallacies which there was no means of exposing, however de- 
ceptive the colour they gave to the questions before the 
nation. 

The rise of these journals, inauspicious in their moral as 
in their political influence, has led observers to note a change 
which has been passing on the press as a whole. But first 
let us distinguish two aspects a newspaper wears, two func- 
tions it discharges. 

In one aspect it is a commercial undertaking. It sells 
news to those who wish to buy news. It sells space in its 
columns to those advertisers who desire means for bringing 
their wares (or offered services) to the notice of the public. 
So far its aims and purposes are simple, straightforward, un- 
exceptionable. It is a trading concern, directed to the mak- 
ing of pecuniary profits. 

Its other aspect is that of a guide and adviser, seeking to ' 
form the opinion and influence the action of the public. It 
comments on current events; it advocates or opposes certain 
views or politics, professing to be in such advocacies animated 



-/ 



96 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

by public spirit and a disinterested wish to serve the whole 
community. This spirit may, and often does, prompt the 
proprietor's or the editor's action. But the real though of 
course unavowed motive may be selfish and even sordid, per- 
haps the desire to make gain for the proprietor or his friends 
out of some undertaking which the State can help or dis- 
courage, perhaps a pecuniary inducement offered by persons 
needing the help of the press. It is of course impossible for 
the public to know in any given case what may be the motives 
that lie behind the action of the newspaper ; and in most cases 
its professions of disinterested patriotism are taken at their 
face value. The same confiding spirit which makes the 
average reader believe the news which he reads in the paper 
makes him assume that the views and arguments which ac- 
company the news are also, even though they may be partisan, 
at least honestly partisan. Thus, that commercial character 
which a newspaper has in its first-mentioned aspect of a seller 
of news and of advertising space, and which is innocuous in 
that aspect, because understood by everybody, may be secretly 
present and potent in affecting its performance of the func- 
tion of commenting on events and advocating policies. Pre- 
mising this significant distinction between the two aspects a 
newspaper wears, we may return to consider the course of 
recent developments in political journalism. 

The leading organs of the press have been, and are still, 
in free countries, the one great and indispensable medium for 
the diffusion of information and opinion on political topics. 
The daily paper reports events and the views, spoken and 
written, of prominent men regarding events, and it does this 
with a perfection of machinery and a display of executive 
talent that are among the most conspicuous achievements of 
our time. As already observed, it generally adds to its ac- 
counts of events happening and words spoken its own com- 
ments, intended to influence the minds of its readers in 
favour of the political views which it professes and which are, 
presumably, those of the proprietors and the editorial staff. 
This is partisanship, but when, as usually happens, the par- 
tisanship is known to the reader, it can be allowed for and 
discounted. So long as there is no suppression or perversion 
of truth no harm is done. The attitude is (subject to two 
differences to be hereafter noted) substantially the same as 



chap, x THE PEESS IN A DEMOCEACT 97 

that of a public speaker advocating on a platform the canse 
of his party. Neither from him nor from the newspaper 
can impartiality be expected. We are satisfied if each is 
fairly honest, neither distorting facts nor misrepresenting the 
position of opponents. 

If every newspaper did its best to ascertain and to tell the 
truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and gave 
equal opportunities for the expression of all views, leaving 
the public to judge between those views, newspapers would 
be, so far as politics are concerned, an almost unmixed good. 
Everything that can be done would have been done to enable 
the formation of a sound and sober public opinion, and 
though the people would sometimes err they would have only 
themselves to blame. This virtue is not to be looked for in 
such a world as the present. To demand it would be what 
theologians call a Counsel of Perfection. The people are 
pretty well served when a party paper reports events and 
speeches with fairness to both sides. Such a paper consults 
its own interests in doing so, for it is respected, and is more 
likely to be read, by members of the other party. The paper 
has, moreover, a sort of responsibility to its own party, which 
regards it as an asset, the value of whose advocacy is reduced 
if it becomes intemperately reckless, or descends to personal 
abuse, for that may produce a reaction beneficial to the per- 
son assailed, who might relish attacks as a tribute to his im- 
portance. It is not invective that damages an antagonist 
but the bringing up against him of his own errors in word 
or deed. Sensible men, a minority no doubt, but a minority 
which influences the rank and file, form their own opinion 
from the facts little affected by newspaper praise or 
dispraise. 

Till past the middle of last century a newspaper occupy- \ • 

ing itself with political affairs — and it is only with these / / 

that we are here concerned — was primarily a party organ, 

in close touch with party leaders. The editor was often an 

independent and forceful personality, who took his own line, 

perhaps trying to hold an Olympian position in which he 

could bestow censure or praise on one or other party at his 

pleasure. 1 But in either case it was as an organ and leader 

iAs instances may be mentioned Horace Greeley (in his better mo- 
ments) and Edwin L. Godkin in America, Edward Sterling and John T. 
Delane in England, Emile Girardin in France. 

VOL. I H 



98 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

of public opinion that the paper stood out to the world. It 
was, of course, also a commercial undertaking which had to 
pay its way and earn a profit; and the wish to earn a profit 
might influence its political attitude. But the advocacy of 
political doctrines and the function of giving the public the 
means of judging for itself by a copious supply of news pur- 
ported to be its first aim. 

Latterly, however, the newspaper has developed another 
side. Though it still claims to stand as the purveyor of truth 
and the disinterested counsellor of the people, it is now pri- 
marily a business concern, an undertaking conducted for 
profit like any other. The proprietor has begun to dwarf 
the editor. The latter has been a man of letters with a pride 
in his gifts, and usually with a set of opinions which he seeks 
to propagate. The proprietor is a man of business, and 
though he may desire power as well as money, profit comes 
before political opinions. The editor and his staff may be 
animated by the purest public spirit and may believe all they 
write, but the proprietor must make money by extending his 
circulation and (through the circulation) the more consider- 
able returns from advertisements. When the function of 
purveying truthful news and tendering sound advice seems 
to conflict with that of increasing the paper's circulation, the 
obvious way of attaining the latter aim is by taking the line 
most likely to please the buyers. Noting the direction in 
which public opinion is moving, the paper will follow, per- 
haps exaggerate and intensify, the feeling of the moment, or, 
still more adroitly, it will anticipate the feeling it sees just 
arising. Another form of gainful activity occurs when the 
paper's help is desired by a class or a group of persons who 
have some private interests to promote. They may induce 
it to advocate legislation from which they expect some bene- 
fit, perhaps a protective duty, or a railroad project. Or 
they may wish to work up a boom in the stock market or to 
influence the action of Government in some foreign or colonial 
question out of which money may be made. A financial 
group may acquire a number of journals, and while work- 
ing them for profit may also use its power to promote other 
business enterprises, and to further the ambitions of polit- 
ical leaders. In cases of this kind, where the attitude of the 
paper is determined not by honest conviction but by an un- 






chap, x THE PRESS IN A DEMOCRACY 99 

disclosed motive, the public, ignorant of the secret induce- 
ment, is misled. It is only in some few countries where the 
tone of journalism has declined with that of public life in 
general that these evils have become serious. But the risk 
is always present. 

Another perversion of press power appears when a group 
of politicians, or perhaps a single person, works a paper, or 
even a number of papers, for their or his political advance- 
ment. In a country where service in the legislature, or elo- 
quence on the stump, is not the only door open to high polit- 
ical office, an ambitious man may seek to win influence and 
votes by addressing the electorate through his journal or 
journals just as a politician would do by platform speeches. 
In such instances it may be thought that the journal's influ- 
ence is lessened when the facts are known, because intelligent 
readers understand and discount the motives for its pro- 
prietor's action. Yet this may not happen. If the paper 
commands a host of readers by the attractiveness of its non- 
political matter, the support it gives to the political group, or 
to the man, still continues to tell on their minds ; and it must 
be remembered that the great majority of these readers are 
neither well informed nor intelligent enough to realize the 
nature of the game that is being played. 

Where a journal, from whatever motives, desires to in- 
fluence opinion and votes in a particular direction, it has two 
methods available. One is that of argument. It will advo- 
cate or oppose a policy, will extol, or disparage or even calum- 
niate, a party chief, after the manner of party speakers on 
the platform. Experience has shown that, where party gov- 
ernment exists, such advocacy is inevitable and is, within rea- 
sonable limits, the best way of bringing out the issues in- 
volved and rousing the attention of the citizens. This 
method, if it abstains from falsification and calumny, is fair 
and above-board. Sensitive men may suffer more than they 
would if attacked by a public speaker, because to him they 
can reply directly, calling him to account for misrepresenta- 
tion more easily than they can an anonymous journalist. 
Yet no great harm is done. In political warfare hard knocks 
must be expected. 

The other method is more crafty and more effective. 
Since it is Facts that count for most in the formation of 



V' 






100 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

opinion, the newspaper which desires its views to prevail will 
try to make out its case by facts. Sometimes it may assume 
facts : i.e. it will put forward a theory of the motives or in- 
tentions of a person or a group of politicians, and presently 
treat that theory as an accepted reality, proceeding to ground 
charges upon it. Sometimes it may even invent facts — i.e. 
it will catch up (possibly itself set agoing) a rumour, and 
then proceed to refer to the rumour as a fact, give it prom- 
inence, hammer it into the public mind by repeated blows. 
This method needs to be prudently applied, for the alleged 
fact may be disproved, and if this happens frequently, the 
paper's credit will suffer. A safer and more telling device 
than either argument or misrepresentation is found in the 
Selection of facts. In every controversy there are plenty of 
facts fit to be adduced on both sides. If a paper skilfully 
and systematically selects for publication all the facts that 
point to one conclusion, and suppresses or mentions curtly 
and scantily all the facts that bear the other way, it cannot 
be charged with direct falsehood, though it practically falsi- 
fies the case by withholding from its readers the means of 
forming a just judgment. The suppression of the truth is 
more insidious than the suggestion of the false. This Nega- 
tive misrepresentation is as easy and more prudent than 
Positive, because detection and conviction are more difficult. 
Partisan speakers as well as journals slip into it more or less 
unconsciously, but it is far more effective, and usually more 
deliberate, in the hands of the journal, and has been em- 
ployed on a great scale, especially in matters of foreign pol- 
icy. Before the outbreak of the war between the United 
States and Spain in 1898 the newspapers of the former coun- 
try were deluged with matter putting the conduct of Spain in 
Cuba — conduct doubtless open to grave censure — in the 
worst light and letting little or nothing appear on her behalf. 
A more remarkable case was seen a year later, when the bulk 
of the British press * stated and exaggerated what case there 
was against the Transvaal Government, while ignoring the 
facts which made in favour of that republic, with the result 

1 There were, however, some conspicuous exceptions. In one of theM 
an important newspaper incurred much unpopularity and lost heavily, 
but it held on, and when the South African War was over regained 
more than it had lost. 



chap, x THE PRESS IN A DEMOCRACY 101 

that the British public never had the data necessary for 
forming a fair judgment. 

These instances, to which others might be added, illus- 
trate the fact that press exaggerations or misrepresentations 
are especially mischievous in questions arising with foreign 
countries. Where the controversy is domestic, the citizens 
know more about it, and the activity of the opposing parties 
may be relied on to bring out the facts and provide answers 
to mendacious statements and fallacious arguments. This 
may not happen where a foreign country is concerned, whose 
case no political party nor any newspaper need feel bound 
(except from purely conscientious motives) to state and 
argue. To do so is usually unpopular, and will be stig- 
matized as unpatriotic. Here, accordingly, the policy of 
suppressing or misrepresenting what may be said on behalf 
of the foreign case commends itself to the journal which 
thinks first of its own business interests. Newspapers have 
in all countries done much to create ill feeling and bring war 
nearer. In each country they say the worst they can of the 
other country, and these reproaches, copied by the news- 
papers of the other, intensify distrust and enmity. All this 
is done not, as sometimes alleged, because newspapers gain by 
wars, for that is not always the case, since their expenditure 
also increases, but because it is easier and more profitable to 
take the path of least resistance. The average man's patri- 
otism, or at least his passion, is aroused. It is comforting 
to be told that the merits are all on his side; nor can there 
ever be too many reasons for hating the foreigner. 

Arts of this nature have long been used by public speakers. 
The newspaper is only an orator addressing a reader instead 
of a hearer. It lacks the personal charm, the gift of attract- 
ing enthusiasm and inspiring attachment, which the great 
orator possesses. But in other respects its power is greater 
than his. It addresses many audiences at once. It is in- 
dispensable, because it gives a mass of non-political news 
which most people want for business purposes, and the rest 
from curiosity. For the multitude who follow public affairs 
with an interest not strong enough to draw them to public 
meetings or make them read the reports of proceedings in a 
legislature, it is the only source of political instruction, per- 
haps almost their only reading of any kind. It can go on 



102 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

reiterating its arguments, or setting forth the same set of facts 
intended to suggest or enforce those arguments, day by day 
and week by week. 

The last fifty or sixty years have seen an evident increase 
in the power of the great newspapers. As the number of 
their readers, as well as the habit of reading, has grown, and 
as their range has expanded, for they supply news from all 
over the world and treat many new subjects, which only 
specialists can handle, so also their revenue and their ex- 
penditure have increased. Since they require a larger cap- 
ital than formerly, the stronger papers have grown, and the 
weaker have withered away, while few new rivals have ap- 
peared, because to establish a daily journal is a costly and 
risky enterprise. Thus, in the great cities of nearly every 
country, the numlx r of leading papers is now comparatively 
small, but each wields a greater power than formerly. This 
is not due to any finer quality in their articles, for the writ- 
ing is no more brilliant than formerly — in some countries 
it seems to have declined. The " leading articles," moreover, 
count for less than does the news and what may be called the 
" attitude " of the great journal, with the prestige it derives 
from the vast scale of its operation, addressing myriads at 
the same moment, in the same word-, with the same air of 
confidence. The feeling that so many people read it and 
believe in it raises the presumption that if they do read it, it 
is because they believe. Seeing in it a force that cannot be 
ignored, each accepts its views because each thinks that others 
are accepting. It speaks ex cathedra with a pontifical au- 
thority which imposes deference. Goldwin Smith said fifty 
years ago that he remembered an article in which a great 
British newspaper claimed that it discharged in the modern 
world the functions of the mediaeval Church. 

Prestige is heightened by mystery. Scarcely any of those 
who read what the paper tells them know who has written 
what they read, or what sources of information he possesses, 
or what intellectual weight. The voice seems to issue from 
a sort of superman, and has a hypnotic power of compelling 
assent. An elderly clubman who has been behind the scenes 
may remark to his friend over their coffee: " After all, these 
thundering articles are written by a fellow with the arrogance 
of inexperience, who knows much less about the matter than 



chap, x THE PRESS IN A DEMOCRACY 103 

you and I do, a young fellow scribbling in a dingy room up 
three pair of stairs." But to the tens of thousands in and all 
round the city the thunder seems to come from the sky above. 
It is like the voice of a great multitude. And in truth the 
paper does represent much more than the scribe in the dingy 
room, for a great journal has traditional authority as well 
as large capital behind it, and its policy may be the product 
of the combined action of a number of shrewd minds, watch- 
ing the ebbs and flows of opinion, studying how to please the 
vast electorate, or how to terrify the men in office. Behind 
the argumentative advocacy, in itself a small matter, is the 
power of manipulating news, and of reporting what the pro- 
prietors wish to be known and ignoring what they wish to 
keep out of sight. Strange is the fascination of the printed 
page. Men who would give little credence to a tale told them 
by a neighbour, or even written to them by a friend, believe 
what the newspaper tells them merely because they see it in 
print. In one country where newspaper inaccuracy is taken 
as matter of course, the same man who says, " You know the 
papers are full of lies," will forthwith repeat some charge 
against a politician on the faith of a paragraph, believing, 
because he saw it in the newspaper, that there must be some- 
thing in it. 

There are countries in which one source of a journal's 
power consists in its relations, real or supposed, with the 
ministry of the day, or with those great financial interests 
which are believed, not without reason, to exert an influence 
more permanent than that of officials, since they do not come 
and go with a popular vote. Ministers, and also prominent 
politicians not in office, have frequently used, and been helped 
by, newspapers, repaying them sometimes by private intelli- 
gence, sometimes, as in the United States, by the bestowal of 
foreign missions, sometimes, as in England, by titular hon- 
ours. 1 Not to speak of Germany under Bismarck, KatkofT 
rendered great services to the Russian Government in the 
'seventies, and some English politicians have owed much to 
the incessant efforts of their press friends, while in Aus- 

1 Cases have even occurred in which the Ministry (or a Minister), in 
one country has, in the course of a controversy with a foreign Power, 
endeavoured to win domestic support for itself or frighten the foreign 
Power by secretly directing attacks upon the latter through the press. 



104 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

tralia there have been times when a powerful paper could 
make or unmake a Prime Minister. 

A more important element in the growing ascendancy of 
the press may be found in the fact that in most countries it 
depends less than it did two generations ago on the favour of 
what is called " Society " and the educated classes. The 
political and literary sides of its action had then a significance 
which has declined with the increasing importance of its 
commercial aspects. It is less amenable to the critical judg- 
ment of what are called the " men of culture," because it re- 
lies on the vast mass of persons who buy it merely for news 
or for business purposes, and who advertise in it for the lat- 
ter. To the majority of such persons its political attitude is 
indifferent; and this makes the political news it publishes, 
and the interpretations of that news it supplies, a more ef- 
ficient means of propaganda. Secure in its hold upon the 
business community and the multitude of readers who are 
glad to have their thinking done for them, it Deed not regard 
criticisms proceeding from the austere or fastidious few. 

Those whose recollections go back half a century seem 
agreed that the power of journalism, as compared with that 
of the most eminent individual statesmen, lias in nearly every 
free country been growing. Let us compare the opportuni- 
ties of influence which were open to such men as Peel or 
Gladstone, Calhoun or Seward or Grover Cleveland, with 
those which their successors to-day enjoy, and estimate the 
advantages the journal possesses when engaged in a conflict 
with the statesman. 

To-day the statesman, even if he be a brilliant speaker 
whose speeches are invariably reported, has a far smaller 
audience than the newspaper, because it is read steadily from 
day to day, and he only occasionally. He may have a per- 
sonal charm which the paper lacks. He may be an orator 
on whose lips the crowd hangs. He may, like Theodore 
Roosevelt, be a figure throbbing with life, who becomes the 
hero, almost the personal friend, of a multitude who admire 
his force and love his breezy ways. But the aggressive qual- 
ity which is indispensable to prominence makes enemies, and 
exposes him to a fire of criticism and misrepresentation. He 
cannot be always contradicting misstatements and repelling 
charges; nor be sure that his denials will reach those who 



chap, x THE PRESS IN A DEMOCRACY 105 

have read the charges. He can grapple with and throw a 
personal foe, but in a conflict with the impersonal newspaper 
it will always have the last word. It can persistently take 
for granted statements which require proof until the reader 
believes they have been proved. It can incessantly repeat 
the same argument or the same accusation, and can do this 
incidentally, as well as in a set way, so as to influence that 
host of readers who are too listless to enquire into the truth 
of assertions or insinuations sandwiched in between the news 
about markets or sport. Tactics like these will win against 
all but those strongest antagonists who have already by in- 
tellectual force and moral dignity secured the confidence of 
the people. Iteration is like the ceaseless stream of bullets 
from a machine-gun. It is the deadliest engine of war in 
the press armoury. 

The power of the newspaper, one of the most remarkable 
novelties of the modern world, has two peculiar features. 
It has no element of Compulsion and no element of Re- 
sponsibility. Whoever exposes himself to its influence does 
so of his own free will. He need not buy the paper, nor 
read it, nor believe it. If he takes it for his guide, that is 
his own doing. The newspaper, as it has no legal duty, is 
subject to no responsibility, beyond that which the law affixes 
to indefensible attacks on private character or incitements 
to illegal conduct. It is an old maxim that power and re- 
sponsibility should go together, and that no man is good 
enough to be trusted with power for the employment of which 
he need give no account. Here, however, we have power 
which can be used without anything except conscience to 
restrict or guide its use. A journal is not liable, civilly or 
criminally, for propagating untruth or suppressing truth un- 
less damage to a particular individual or harm to the State 
can be proved. 

This is the case with politicians also, as with all who speak 
in public, but they, being individuals, have something to lose 
by speaking untruth or perverting truth. They can be de- 
nounced, and deprived of whatever respect or influence they 
may have enjoyed. To penalize a newspaper for like con- 
duct is so difficult as to be often scarcely possible. The paper 
is an impersonal entity. Its writers are unknown : its editor, 
and even its proprietors, may be known to comparatively few. 



106 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

Proof of a deliberate purpose to mislead will not necessarily 
affect its circulation or reduce its influence upon masses of 
men who know little and care less about such offences. Ex- 
cept in the most glaring cases, it can with impunity misuse 
its power. The proprietor, or the editor to whom his pro- 
prietor gives a free hand, may be patriotic and well-inten- 
tioned, but the power either wields is not accompanied by 
responsibility. 

These things being what they are, it may seem surprising 
that the influence of the press should not, in English-speak- 
ing countries, have been more abused than has in fact been 
the case. How far it is now abused, either there or else- 
where, is a subject which cannot be here dealt with, for the 
facts, differing in different countries, are everywhere hard 
to ascertain. It is enough to indicate how liable to abuse 
power so irresponsible must be, and how salutary the tra- 
ditions which have, in the countries just referred to, main- 
tained among the leading journals, a creditable standard of 
courtesy and a fair, if not perfect, standard of honour. The 
vigilance of public opinion, the strenuous competition which 
exists between the able men who till the higher posts, and their 
pride in their profession, have helped to guard these tradi- 
tions. 

In the chapters of Part II. which deal with the six democ- 
racies there selected for description, I have attempted to esti- 
mate the authority actually exerted in each by its press. 
That authority seems to be stronger in Great Britain — pos- 
sibly also in the British self-governing Dominions — than in 
the United States; but it must be remembered that in a very 
large country there are so many journals, each relying on the 
circulation it holds in its own territory, that no such general 
predominance can be won as a very few may possess in a small 
country. In England, and even in Scotland, politicians, and 
especially candidates for Parliament, a class prone to the 
habit of nervously " tapping the weather-glass," are apt to 
exaggerate the political importance of the press. There have 
been General Elections at which the balance of journalistic 
strength was heavily on the side which suffered a crushing de- 
feat at the polls. A member may hold his seat for many 
years against the hostility of all the local papers. If he is 
personally liked and trusted, their attacks produce a reaction 



chap, x THE PKESS IN A DEMOCKACY 107 

in his favour. But in a large country, and even in a city 
like New York, full of ignorant voters, persistent denigration 
may destroy a politician. A calumny once launched cannot 
be overtaken. Attack is easier than defence: and the re- 
sources of misrepresentation are infinite. 1 

A journal which addresses itself specially to one particu- 
lar section of a nation, be it a racial, or religious, or indus- 
trial section, needed as it may be for some purposes, can be 
dangerous if it presents to that section a purely partisan set 
of facts and opinions, exaggerating whatever grievances the 
section has, and intensifying its sense of separation from and 
antagonism to other parts of the nation. Those belonging to 
such a section who read other newspapers also will not be 
seriously affected, but where they see only their own class 
organ, and take its statements for truth, an irritable fanati- 
cism on behalf of sectional ideas and class aims may be engen- 
dered. This is an instance of the general principle that the 
best remedy against whatever dangers the dominance of the 
press involves is to be found in the free and full competition 
of independent newspapers. It is the predominance in one 
particular area or among the members of one particular class, 
of a single paper, or of several controlled by the same person 
or group and working for the same ends, that threatens the 
formation of a fair and enlightened public opinion. The 
tyranny of monopoly is even worse in opinion than in com- 
merce. Suppose a capitalistic combination to acquire a large 
number of newspapers, placing them under the direction of 
one capable mind and forceful will, and using their enormous 
resources to drive rivals out of the field. The papers would 
be able to supply the fullest and latest news in every depart- 
ment of journalism, and to purchase the service of the ablest 
pens. With their vast circulation, they could, by presenting 
facts of one colour and tendency and suppressing or discol- 
ouring all news of an opposite tendency, succeed in impress- 
ing, if not on the majority yet on a large percentage of the 
voters, whatever opinion they desired. The weaker kind of 
politician would succumb to them. Ministries would fear 

i Among them the cartoon representing a public man in the commis- 
sion of offences he has never committed is one specially difficult to deal 
with. When this is done at an election, the result desired may be at- 
tained before the calumny can be refuted, and there are countries in 
which the law of libel gives no sufficient protection. 



108 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

to offend them. Foreign countries would soon begin to rec- 
ognize their supremacy. If the capital needed to finance such 
an enterprise and the powerful brain needed to direct it were 
to be united, what might not happen in a country not too 
large for such an enterprise? The contingency is improb- 
able, but those who know what centralization and combina- 
tion have in all branches of business been able to effect will 
hardly deem it impossible. How could the dictatorship of 
such a syndicated press be resisted? The remedy proposed 
for industrial monopolies is nationalization, but here nation- 
alization would aggravate the evil, making the State itself 
the tyrant. Recourse might be needed to drastic legislation 
of a kind not yet tried. 

The coincidences of opportunity with a supreme talent 
for using opportunity mark the turning points of history. 
Alexander of Maeedon having received from nature extraor- 
dinary gifts, inherited a well-trained army and saw before 
him a divided Greece and an effete Persian empire waiting to 
be conquered. Had In 4 been born earlier or later, the whole 
course of events might have been different. The career of 
Napoleon points the same moral. There have doubtless been 
many other men of geniufl who might have equally affected 
the fortunes of the world had like opportunities come to 
them. 1 

What has been said as to the influence the press can exert 
on the working of popular govemmenl through its power of 
forming opinion may he summed up in a few propositions. 

Universal suffrage has immensely increased the proportion 

iA parallel, perhaps not too fanciful, may be drawn between such 
cases and those of famous thinkers whose creative gift, continuing 
to work long after them, was evoked, or turned into the needed channel, 
by the circumstances of their own time. St. Paul coming at a moment 
when a new religious teaching had to be diffused over the world, St. 
Augustine when the fall of Rome made it necessary to create a theologi- 
cal view of history to replace the reverence for the Empire that was 
breaking in pieces, Thomas of Aquinum meeting the call of the moment 
for a philosophic systematization of Christian doctrine, Kant stirred to 
his constructive work by the scepticism of Hume, may be cited as in- 
stances of this. Whenever such minds had come into the world they 
would probably have done memorable work, but the stimulus of the 
moment w T ould have been wanting, and the state of the world might 
have prevented their gifts from having full effect. Conversely there are 
cases to be noted in which, when a great opportunity arrives, no genius 
appears capable of turning it to account. 






chap, x THE PRESS IN A DEMOCRACY 109 

of electors who derive their political views chiefly or wholly 
from newspapers. 

The causes which enable newspapers well managed, and 
commanding large capital, to drive weaker papers out of the 
field, have in all countries reduced the number of influential 
journals, and left power in comparatively few hands. 

The influence upon opinion exercised by a great newspaper 
as compared with a prominent statesman or even with the de- 
bates in legislative bodies, has grown. 

Newspapers have become more and more commercial under- 
takings, devoted primarily to their business interests. 

The temptations to use the influence of a newspaper for 
the promotion of pecuniary interests, whether of its proprie- 
tors or of others, have also increased. Newspapers have be- 
come one of the most available instruments by which the 
Money Power can make itself felt in politics. 

The power of the press is a practically irresponsible power, 
for the only thing it need fear (apart from libel suits) is the 
reduction of circulation, and the great majority of its readers, 
interested only in business and sport, know little of and care 
little for the political errors or tergiversations it may commit. 

Press power is wielded more effectively through the manip- 
ulation and suppression of news than by the avowed advocacy 
of any political views. It is more dangerous in the sphere 
of foreign than in that of domestic policy, and is one of the 
chief hindrances to international goodwill. 

Democratic government rests upon and requires the exer- \ 
cise of a well-informed and sensible opinion by the great 
bulk of the citizens. Where the materials for the formation 
of such an opinion are so artfully supplied as to prevent the / 
citizens from judging fairly the merits of a question, opinion 
is artificially made instead of being let grow in a natural way, 
and a wrong is done to democracy. 

No one will suppose that an indication of the dangers 
which misuse of the power of the press may bring implies 
any disparagement of the invaluable services it renders in 
modern free countries. Without it, as already observed, ) 
there could be no democracy in areas larger than were the 
city communities of the ancient world. The newspaper en- 
ables statesmen to reach the whole people by their words, and 



110 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

keeps legislatures and executive officials under the eves of the 
people. Itself irresponsible, it enforces responsibility upon 
all who bear a part in public work. It is because the press 
alone can do and is doing so much salutary and necessary 
work that attention needs to be called to any causes which 
might, by shaking public confidence in it, impair its useful- 
ness to the community. 



CHAPTER XI 



PARTY 



Political parties are far older than democracy. They 
have existed in nearly all countries and under all forms of 
government, though less in monarchies than in oligarchies, 
in the latter of which they have been particularly frequent 
and fierce. The Guelfs and Ghibellines, after having for a 
time divided Germany, divided the feudal nobility and the 
cities of northern and middle Italy for three centuries. 

In popular governments, however, parties have a wider 
extension if not a more strenuous life, for where every citizen 
has a vote, with the duty to use it at elections, each of the 
parties which strive for mastery must try to bring the largest 
possible number of voters into its ranks, organize them locally, 
appeal to them by the spoken and printed word, bring them 
up to the poll. Ballots having replaced bullets in political 
strife, every voter is supposed to belong to one of the partisan 
hosts and to render more or less obedience to its leaders. 
He has, moreover, at least in theory, something to gain from 
its victory, because each party promises legislation of the 
kind he is supposed to desire, whereas most men who called 
themselves Guelfs and Ghibellines fought merely out of an 
attachment, usually hereditary, to a party name, and prob- 
ably also to the cause of some particular leader, as in Mexico 
to-day if the member of a band is asked to what he belongs, 
he answers, " To my chief " (mi jefe). 

Many have been the origins whence in time past parties 
have sprung. Eeligious or ecclesiastical differences have 
given birth to them, as in England and Scotland in the seven- 
teenth century, or racial divisions, or loyalty to a dynasty, 
as in the case of the Stuarts in England after James II.'s ex- 
pulsion, and the Bourbons in Prance after 1848. Even at- 
tachment to a particular leader who has gathered followers 
round him may keep them together long after he has passed 

111 



112 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pan i 

away. In the republic of Uruguay there were, sixty years 
ago, two prominent generals, each with a band of adherents. 
These Reds and AYhites still divide the country. A party 
may in its first beginnings be built on any foundation — 
wood or stubble as well as rock — for it is not the origin that 
matters so much as the forces which, once created, a party 
can enlist. However, in more recent days, and especially in 
countries enjoying representative government, the normal 
source is found in the emergence of some type of political 
doctrine or some specific practical issue which divides the 
citizens, some taking one side, some another. 

Though the professed reason for the existence of a party 
is the promotion of a particular set of doctrines and ideas, 
it has a concrete side as well as a set of abstract doctrines. 
It is abstract in so far as it represents the adhesion of many 
minds to the same opinions. It is concrete as consisting of 
a number of men who act together in respect of their holding, 
or professing to hold, such opinions. But being a living or- 
ganism, it develops in ways not limited by its theory or its 
professions, and is affected by the constantly changing cir- 
cumstances amid which it mora and to which it must adapt 
itself. 

Whatever its origin, every party lives and thrives by the 
concurrent action of fmir tendencies or forces which may be 
described as those of Sympathy, Imitation, Competition and 
Pugnacity. Even if intellectual conviction had much to do 
with its creation, emotion has more to do with its vitality and 
combative power. Men enjoy com hat for its own sake, lov- 
ing to outstrip others and carry their Hag to victory. The 
same sort of passion as moves the crowd watching a boat race 
between Oxford and Cambridge or a football match between 
Yale and Harvard, is the steam which works the great Eng- 
lish and American parties. Nothing holds men so close to- 
gether as the presence of antagonists strong enough to he 
worth defeating, and not so strong as to be invincible. This 
is why a party can retain its continuity while forgetting or 
changing its doctrines and seeing its old leaders disappear. 
New members and new leaders, as they come in, imbibe the 
spirit and are permeated by the traditions which the party 
has formed. It is pleasant to tread in the steps of those who 
have gone before and associate one's self with their fame. 






CHAP. XI 



PAETY 113 



Life becomes more interesting when each talks to each of how 
the opposite party must be outgeneralled, and more exciting 
when the day of an electoral contest arrives. Though a cer- 
tain set of views may have been the old basis of a party, and 
be still inscribed on its banner, the views count for less than 
do the fighting traditions, the attachment to its name, the 
inextinguishable pleasure in working together, even if the 
object sought be little more than the maintenance of the or- 
ganization itself. In England, sixty years ago, few indeed 
of the crowds that at an election flaunted their blue or yellow 
colours could have explained why they were Blues or Yel- 
lows. They had always been Blues or Yellows ; probably 
their fathers were. It was irrational, but it expressed a sen- 
timent of loyalty to a cause. If the bulk were not fighting 
for principles, they were fighting unselfishly for something 
outside themselves, expecting from victory nothing but the 
pleasure of victory. 1 

It was in English-speaking countries that party first be- 
came a force in free political life. Whigs and Tories in 
England date from the days of Charles IT., parties in Amer- 
ica from the presidential election of 179G. In the former 
case party appeared first in Parliament. In the latter it ap- 
peared simultaneously in Congress and in the people at large. 
The influence and working of a party system need to be con- 
sidered separately in each of these two fields. Let us begin 
with the people. 

In countries which enjoy representative government parties 
have two main functions, the promotion by argument of their 
principles and the carrying of elections. These provide con- 
stant occupation, and success in either contributes to success 
in the other. The business of winning elections involves the 
choice of candidates. In every election area, the local mem- 
bers of the party must agree upon a candidate for whom their 
united vote will be cast. While constituencies were small, 
because electoral districts were small and the suffrage was 

1 1 knew a Scottish constituency in which a party had from personal 
dissensions become cleft into two sections where there was no political 
difference between the sections, but each held together and, during a 
long series of years, tried to carry a candidate of its own merely 
because each desired to be the ruling force in the town. 

This used to happen in the Italian republics of the Middle Ages, the 
personal rivalries of leaders becoming the basis for factions. 

VOL. I I 



114 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

restricted by a property qualification, men either put them- 
selves forward as candidates, or induced a small group of in- 
fluential electors to nominate them. A person of local prom- 
inence as landowner in a county or merchant in a borough 
was known to many of the electors, and accepted on the score 
of his position or personal abilities or popularity. This still 
happens in parts of France and of Switzerland, and formerly 
happened in America. But when constituencies became large 
and the feeling of democratic equality pervaded all class 
the principle of popular sovereignty required the choice of a 
party candidate to be made by those of the electors who be- 
longed to the party. So Local party Committees grew up, 
and Local party meetingl! were convoked t<> select the candi- 
date. This custom was, many years later, adopted in Kng- 

land where, h o w e ver, the Central Office (t.e. the national 

party mam may tactfully suggest to the local asso- 

ciation the name Off a particular aspirant. Without some 

party authority onsed as entitled t<> recommend a can- 

didate, the votiiiL r strength <»f the party might he dispersed 
among competing party candidates, many electors not know- 
ing for whom they Plight t«» vote. In Large constituencies. 

guidance u essential, 1 bo when in the United States it hi 
desired to put forward as candidates for city offices better 

men than those whom the party Organization Lfl nominating, a 

citizens' Committee or <h-,d Government Organization, 
formed for the occasion, issues ;i list of candidates whom a 
bevy of respected inhabitants join in recommending. 

Another branch of political work formerly left to private 
initiative has qow become recognised a> incumbent on a party. 
It is the conduet of elections and the defraying, where the 

Candidate is a poor man, of part at least of the expenses of a 

contest, expenses which have grown with the increased li 

i When in ls!»7 the whole of London was divided into ten borOUghs, 
each with :in elected Council, few resident! in a borOUgfa had any means 

of judging the merits <>f the candidate! offering bhemselvei tor election. 

Hie nominator! were not known to the va.-t majority of the voters, and 

he election! were not fought on party line- one could not. even if 

one had Wished to do 80, vote for a man a- a Torj or a Liberal. I 

remember at roch an election (in a borough of 800,000 Inhabitant!) to 

havo scanned the lists of candidates, and found no cine to j;uido my 
Choice till in one I discovered the name of a learned llomerie scholar. 
For him I pro m p t ly Voted, and. assuming that a man of his distinc- 
tion would choose his company well, voted for most of those on the list 
in which his name appeared. 



CHAP. XI 



PAKTY 115 



of constituencies due to universal suffrage. Every party has 
now funds available for helping candidates, a practice liable 
to be abused, yet unavoidable, for without help capable men 
might be excluded, and the candidate with the longest purse 
would have an unfair advantage. 

Another and not less important function of a party is that 
of holding together the members of a representative assembly 
who profess the political opinions for which the party stands, 
so as to concentrate their efforts on the advocacy of its prin- 
ciples and the attainment of its ends. This is especially 
needed in countries living under what is called Parliamentary 
Government, where ihe Executive is virtually chosen and 
dismissible by the majority of the Legislature. Under such 
a system the majority, called the Party in Power, carries on 
the government of the country through some of its leaders, 
the executive ministers, whom it keeps in office so long as they 
retain its confidence. Such a scheme cannot work without 
some sort of discipline to keep the members of the majority 
solid, reminding them of their responsibility to their sup- 
porters in the constituencies. From Great Britain, which 
has been governed in this way for about two centuries, this 
scheme spread tosuch count fie- as Canada, Australia, France, 
Belgium, Holland and the three Scandinavian kingdoms, in 
all of which a " Party in Power " carries on the government, 
while the rest of the legislature constitute the Opposition or 
Oppositions. 

In other countries, such as the United States, the majority 
in the legislature, though it controls legislation, does not 
choose the Executive, that function being reserved to the 
people voting at the polls ; so that the expression " Party in 
Power " describes the party which holds the Executive. But 
this difference reduces but little the need for party organiza- 
tion and discipline in the legislative chambers. In both cases 
the party must hold together in order to pursue its purposes. 
In both the motive and regulative force that keeps them 
united together, consists in the common wish to give effect 
to their doctrines by legislation, and in both, moreover, the 
party leaders have a prospect of winning authority, distinc- 
tion, and emoluments, the rank and file of the party sharing, 
when their turn comes, in getting or securing for their 
friends whatever patronage may be going. Thus the im- 



116 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

pulse to hold together is strong: thus a party may maintain 
unity and vigour even if it has ceased to care for the prin- 
ciples for whose sake it professes to exist. 

This system, under which the fortunes of a nation are en- 
trusted to one set of persons who represent the majority, pos- 
sibly only a bare majority, of the voters, has been much cen- 
sured, especially by theorists unfamiliar with the actual work- 
ing of representative institutions. Why, it is urged, should 
administrative officers, most of whose work has nothing to do 
with their party opinions, be they Whig or Tory in England, 
Republican or Democratic in America, be taken entirely from 
those who profess one set of political views and belong to one 
organization? The man with the fullest knowledge of for- 
eign relations, or the man who best understands educational 
problems, may belonir to the minority. Why should his abil- 
ities he lost to the public Bervice I Why make so many public 
questions controversial that need not he so I What, is the 
sense of Betting Dp one group of men, A, B, C and D, to in- 
troduce legislation and handle administrative problems, and 
of Betting up a Beoond Bet, W, X, Y, /, to harass and trip up 
the former, opposing their proposals and hampering their 
executive action I let this is understood to be, under the 
British system, the especial business of a parliamentary op- 
position, for the men who compose it find a motive tot their 
attacks in the hope of turning their antagonists out of office 
to install themselves therein. Thus B parliament becomes a 
battlefield, and its deliberations a perpetual struggle of the 
Ins and the Outs, in which the interests of the country are 
forgotten. 

Other charges brought against the party system may be enu- 
merated, because they indicate dangers which threaten the 
working of democratic govern m< nt. 

It is alleged to encourage hollowness and insincerity. The 
two great American parties have been compared to empty 
bottles, into which any Liquor mighl be poured, so long as the 
labels were retained. Party divides not only the legislature 
but the nation into hostile camps, and presents it to foreign 
states as so divided. It substitutes passion and bittern 
for a common patriotism, prejudices men's minds, makes each 
Bide suspect the proposals of the other, prevents a fair con- 
sideration of each issue upon its merits, enslaves representa- 



CHAP. XI 



PARTY 117 



tives and discourages independent thought in the party as a 
whole, because the " solidity " or " regularity " which casts 
a straight ballot is enforced as the first of duties. It prompts 
each party to make promises and put forward plans whose 
aim is not to benefit the country but to attract popular sup- 
port. When one party plays this game, the other party has 
to follow suit with another and, if possible, more attractive 
programme. 

Another perversion is the extension of national party issues 
to local elections, with which they have, as a rule, nothing to 
do. To run a candidate for a county or city office in an 
American state, or for a county or borough council in Eng- 
land, as a Republican or Democrat, as a Tory or Liberal, 
diverts attention from the personal merits of the candidates 
to their party affiliations, obscures the local issues of policy 
by putting loyalty to the national party into the foreground, 
and tends to divide the members of a deliberative local au- 
thority into sections drawn together by their political affini- 
ties, so that these affinities determine their action in questions 
purely local. 

A further dereliction from principle is found in countries 
where posts in the public service are reserved for persons 
who belong to the dominant party. This practice, known as 
the Spoils System, though reduced of late years, is not yet 
extinct in the United States, nor France, Canada, and Aus- 
tralia. In Britain, where it was formerly general, it can be 
still discovered in odd corners, such as some legal, and more 
rarely, some educational, posts. Here, however, it is only a 
secondary force, sometimes giving one candidate a slight ad- 
vantage over another, but seldom installing an incompetent 
man. Retained as a means of rewarding supporters, it is 
excused on the ground that as the other side have practised it, 
" our fellows must have their chance." Neither party de- 
sires to run ahead of the other in the practice of austere 
virtue. 

Lastly, party spirit is accused of debasing the moral stand- 
ards, because it judges every question from the standpoint of 
party interest. It acclaims a successful leader as a hero and 
secures forgiveness for his faults. If the leaders of a party 
in power embark in an unwise foreign policy, or if some 
ardent spirits among the Opposition resort to questionable 



118 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

methods of resistance to what they think unjust, the voice 
of temperate criticism within the party is overborne, because 
party spirit either blinds men to the truth or fears to admit 
errors which the other party will use against it. 1 Even if 
the heads of a party organization are discovered to have 
been using their power for selfish — perhaps for sordid — 
purposes, the party tries to shield them from exposure ; and 
it may accept the tainted aid of rich men seeking their own 
private gains. In one way or another, the sentiment of party 
solidarity supersedes the duty which the citizen owes to the 
State, and becomes a weapon in the hands of an unscrupulous 
chief who can lead the party to victory. Party spirit will 
always he an instrument OO which personal ambition can 
play. In the republics of antiquity a party might help its 
leader to make himself a Tyrant because it hated the other 
faction more than it Loved freedom. Similar phenomena 
were seen in mediaeval Italy, and their pale reflex has been 
sometimes visible in modern states. 

That these are among the dangers to which the system of 

party government exposes a State is practically admitted by 

each party when it is denouncing the action of a rival party. 
They describe those rivals as actuated by the " spirit of fac- 
tion." They exhort the wiser and more moderate memh 
to shake off that spirit, rid themselves of prejudice, and con- 
sider all proposals, even those of opponents, with an open 
mind, while in the same breath they exhort their own fol- 
lowers to close their ranks and go to the polls cherishing the 
traditions of their party, grateful for its services, mindful 
that it emancipated the slave or bestowed old-age pensions 
upon working men. They must sometimes wish that it was 
possible for them to address their own followers in one tongue, 
and their opponents in another, each uncomprehended by the 

i Thus in 1899-1901 many persons in England who disapproved the 
South African War kept silence, because tiny belonged to the party 
which had led the country into what they thought a needless conflict, 
and in 1903 many who disapproved what was called the policy of " pas- 
sive resistance " to the levying of a local tax, part of whose pro cee d ! 
went to support denominational schools, abstained from expressing their 
disapproval of that policy, though they privately admitted that those 
prominent men in their own party who had advised it were setting a 
dangerous precedent. One expects this from the more ignorant or 
thoughtless members of a party, but in both these and other similar 
cases the same phenomenon was visible among the " wise and good " 
also. 



chap, xi PAKTY 119 

other, as shepherds in the Scottish Highlands are said to 
shout their orders to one dog in English and to another in 
Gaelic. 

History is full of the mischiefs wrought by party spirit. 
Yet there is another side to the matter. If parties cause 
some evils, they avert or mitigate others. 
y To begin with, parties are inevitable. jSTo free large coun- 
try has been without them. !NTo one has shown how repre- 
sentative government could be worked without them. They 
bring order out of the chaos of a multitude of voters. If in 
such vast populations as those of the United States, France, 
or England, there were no party organizations, by whom 
would public opinion be roused and educated and directed 
to certain specific purposes? Each party, no doubt, tries to 
present its own side of the case for or against any doctrine 
or proposal, but the public cannot help learning something 
about the other side also, for even party spirit cannot sep- 
arate the nation into water-tight compartments; and the most 
artful or prejudiced party spell-binder or newspaper has to 
recognize the existence of the arguments he is trying to 
refute. Thus Party strife is a sort of education for those 
willing to receive instruction, and something soaks through 
even into the less interested or thoughtful electors. The par- 
ties keep a nation's mind alive, as the rise and fall of the 
sweeping tide freshens the water of long ocean inlets. Dis- 
cussion within each party, culminating before elections in the 
adoption of a platform, brings certain issues to the front, de- 
fines them, expresses them in formulas which, even if tricky 
or delusive, fix men's minds on certain points, concentrating 
attention and inviting criticism. So few people think seri- 
ously and steadily upon any subject outside the range of their 
own business interests that public opinion might be vague and 
ineffective if the party searchlight were not constantly turned 
on. And it may be added that the power of the press to in- 
fluence the average voter by one-sided statements of fact, in- 
cessantly repeated, would be still greater than it is were there 
not party organizations whose business it is to secure a hear- 
ing for their own views. 

Of nominations and elections I have already spoken. But 
a vast deal of preparatory work is needed beyond that which 
the State does when it makes up a register of voters and pro- 



120 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

vides machinery for taking the votes. Who is to do this? 
Who is to get literature to the voters, stir them out of their 
apathy, arrange public meetings, remind the citizens of their 
duty to vote ? Only a permanent party. Temporary organ- 
izations formed to promote a particular cause, such as were 
(in England) the Anti-Corn Law League of 1838 and the 
Eastern Question Association of 1876, may effect much for 
the time being, but die out when the crisis has passed; and 
it becomes increasingly difficult and costly to find means for 
reaching the enormous voting masses of onr time. 

Political philosophers have been wont to deplore the ex- 
istence of party in legislative assemblies and to accuse it of 
leading to dishonesty. They observe that, in the words of 
the comic opera, a member who has u always voted at his 
party's call" cannot but be demoralized. But if there were 
no party voting, and everybody gave hia vote in accordance 
with his own perhaps crude and ill-informed opinions, Parlia- 
mentary government of the Rnglish type could not go on. 
Ministers would not know from hour to hour whether they 
could count on carrying some provision of a Bill which might 
in appearance be trilling, hut would destroy its coherency, 
many of those who would have supported it might be absent, 
while others might give an unconsidered vote. Perpetual un- 
certainty and the weakness of the Executive which uncer- 
tainty involves would be a greater public evil than the sub- 
ordination to his party of a member's personal view in minor 
matters. Where he has a strong conviction, he must of course 
obey it, even at the risk of turning out a ministry, but when, 
dismissing any thought of his own personal interest, lie hon- 
estly applies the general principle that party government re- 
quires some subordination of individual views, his conscience 
will not surfer. 1 

Party discipline in a legislature imposes a needed check 
on self-seeking and on the greater mischief of corruption. 

i Cases of conscience do no doubt arise, and arc sometimes perplex- 
ing, but twenty-seven years' experience in the British House of Com- 
mons have led me to believe that they are less frequent than one would, 
looking at the matter a priori, have expected them to be. Old members 
have often told me that they bad more often regretted votes given 
against their party under what they thought of duly than those 

which they had, though with some doubt, given to support it. I have 
discussed the limits of party obligation in a little volume entitled Hin- 
drances to Good Citizenship, published in 1909. 



CHAP. XI 



PAKTY 121 



The absence of discipline, far from helping conscience to have 
free scope, may result in leaving the field open for selfish 
ambitions. Some years ago a group of strong men who had 
practically controlled the party majority in the United States 
Senate was broken up, and party discipline vanished. In- 
genuous persons expected an improvement. But the first 
result was that a few pushing men came to the front, each 
playing for popularity, and things fell into confusion, the 
legislative machine working in so irregular and unpredictable 
a fashion that a call soon came for the restoration of disci- 
pline. In every governing body there must be some responsi- 
bility, some persons on whom blame can be fixed if bad advice 1 ' 
be given and bad results follow. How a ruling body can 
suffer by the want of permanent parties was illustrated by 
the Athenian Assembly, a crowd of citizens largely guided by 
brilliant speakers holding no office, owning no allegiance to 
any party, each using his talents for his own advancement. 
When the multitude had been misled by such an orator there 
was nobody to be blamed except the orator, and his discredit 
was only a passing incident, for which he might have had 
secret compensation in a corrupt payment. An organized 
party with recognized leaders has a character to lose or to 
gain ; and this applies to an Opposition as well as to a Minis- 
terialist party, for every minority hopes to be some day a 
majority. In Great Britain during the war of 1914-19 
party warfare was suspended, and two successive Coalition 
Ministries formed, so that for a time there was no regular 
Opposition to keep the Ministry up to the mark, inasmuch as 
those party chiefs who stood outside were unwilling to be 
charged with embarrassing their former opponents. The re- 
sult was that a number of members, who, like the Athenian 
orators, were not sufficiently important to feel the bridle of 
responsibility, carried on, each for himself, a sort of guerilla 
warfare, which had not force enough to impose an effective 
check on ministerial errors. An administration formed by 
a coalition of parties is usually weak, not merely because the 
combination is unstable, but because men whose professed - 
principles differ are likely to be entangled in inconsistencies 
or driven to unsatisfactory compromises. So a well-com- 
pacted party in Opposition which stands on its own feet, hav- 
ing had power before and hoping to have power again, is 



122 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

steadied hy the fact that it has a character to lose. Inspir- 
ing confidence because it is known to be responsible, it can 
follow a definite policy and expect a loyal obedience. 

In countries where the few large parties of former times 
have dissolved into small groups, no one of which is large 
enough to command a majority of the legislature, and in 
few of which is there any party discipline, other incon- 
veniences are added. The leaders of a large and strong party 
have an opinion of their followers to regard, as well as the 
public opinion of the nation outside. That opinion within 
the party keeps them straight, for if they are seen to be 
playing for their own hand the party ceases to be trusted. 
Where there are small groups, each becomes a focus of in- 
trigue, in which personal ambitions have scope. The groups 
make bargains with one another and by their combinations, 
perhapfl secretly and suddenly formed. BUOGeSBive ministries 
may he overturned, with injury to the progress of legislation 
and to the continuity of national policy. Since there must 
be panic-, the fewer and stronger they are. the better. 

Must there then always he parties | No one has yet shown 
how SUch governments OOUld get on without them. 1 States- 
men of exceptional force, such as Peel, Disraeli, Gladstone, 

while fully aware of their faults most dearly recognized their 
value One Can imagine a small Community in which the 
citizens know one another BO well that they select men for 
Legislative and executive posts on the BOOre of personal merit, 
and where the legislators are of a virtue SO pure that they 
debate every question with a Bole regard to truth and to the 
advantage of the State. If any such community has existed, 
its records have not been preserved for our instruction. 'One 
can also imagine that in some far distant future when all 
experiments have been tried, and nations, weary of politics, 
Wish to settle down to a (jniet life, a plan may he devised hy 
which each small community, trusting its local concerns to its 
most honest and capable men, shall empower them to choose 
others who will go to some centre where they can deliberate 

i Political philosophers have incessant ly denounced party, but none 
Rooms to have shown how they can either be prevented from arising or 
eliminated when they exist. I could never extracl from Mr. Goldwin 

Smith, with all hie mastery of history and political acumen, any answer 

to the question how representative government could he carried on with- 
out them. 



CHAP. XI 



PAETY 123 



on matters of common concern with other such delegates, 
party being eliminated, because the questions out of which 
the old parties arose have become obsolete. But the wings 
of fancy do not support our flight in a thin air so far above 
the surface of this planet. 

We have so far been considering political parties of the 
old type, co-extensive with the nation and trying to draw 
adherents from all sections and classes within it. There are, 
however, three other kinds of party which ought to be noticed, 
and which may be either within or outside of a large non- 
sectional political party covering the whole country. 

One of these is an ecclesiastical or anti-ecclesiastical or- 
ganization. Where the interests of a religious body are sup- 
posed to need advocacy or protection, or where, on the other 
hand, a Church is deemed to be unduly powerful in political 
affairs, an organization may be formed either to defend it in 
the former case or to resist it in the latter. 1 There are in 
France and Belgium Catholic or so-called " Clerical " parties. 
Examples have been seen in the United States, where an ap- 
prehension that the Eoman Catholic Church was acquiring 
undue power gave birth to the " Know Nothings " in 1853, 
and long afterwards created what was almost an Anti-Cath- 
olic party, under the title of American Protective Association 
(A. P. A.). Both rose suddenly into prominence, but died 
out after a few years. The chief instance of an organization 
acting as an anti-ecclesiastical force, all the stronger for being 
secret, is to be found in the Freemasons of Continental Eu- 
rope. This society with its branches exists in England and 
the United States for purposes purely social and charitable, 
but the Masonic Lodges have in France and Italy an ardently 
anti-clerical, even indeed anti-Christian, colour. They are 
believed to exert an influence before which candidates and 
deputies quail. 

The second class has grown out of the Trade or Labour 
Unions which sprang up during last century among the in- 
dustrial populations of Europe, North America, and Aus- 
tralasia. Formed originally for the purpose of mutual chari- 

i Neither the Primrose League in England nor the Carbonari of Italy 
can properly be referred to this category. The latter is now virtually 
extinct. As to the former, see in the Democratic et Partis politiques 
of Mr. Ostrogorski, p. 250 of French edition of 1912, an instructive 
treatment of the whole subject. 



124 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

table help, they became effective in planning and carrying on 
strikes, and thereafter, realizing the voting power which an 
extended suffrage had given them, passed into the field of 
political action. Out of them and the congresses which they 
hold there have arisen in many countries what are called La- 
bour Parties, putting forward programmes of legislation in- 
tended to benefit the wage-earning class, and to throw more 
of the burden of taxation upon the wealthier part of the com- 
munity. Such platforms, while commanding sympathy from 
those among the richer who think that the wage-earners have 
not yet received a sufficient share in what their toil produces, 
make their most direct appeal to the labouring class itself 
and draw most of their strength from the prospect they open 
of improving its material condition. Though extending over 
the whole country, they are in so far contrasted with the 
older parties that they create a cleavage in the nation which 
is not, as formerly, vertical, but horizontal, having a social 
as well as a political character. In England the Whig and 
Tory parties were each of them composed of persons of all 
degrees of rank and wealth, poor as well as rich. In both 
the ruling section belonged to the richer class, and was apt 
to legislate in its own interest, but between the two sections 
there was no social antagonism. So also in the United States, 
both the Republican and the Democratic party have been 
composed, in almost equal proportions, of the poorer and the 
richer citizens. Now, however, there is a tendency for the 
community to be divided, as the Greek republics were already 
in Plato's time, into a party of the poor and a party of the 
rich, a state of things unfavourable to the formation -of a 
truly national opinion and to some extent to national unity 
in general. 

A third species is the Local or Racial party, familiar ex- 
amples of which are furnished by the Nationalists and the 
Sinn Feiners of Ireland and the Regionalists of Catalonia, 
and were furnished in the Austrian Reichsrath before 1914 
by the Polish and Czech parties. These, like the ecclesiasti- 
cal organizations, are apt to suffer by undue preoccupation 
with their own particular aims and tenets. But what they 
lose in this way they may gain in the power of purchasing, by 
the solid vote they can deliver, the help of one or other of the 
great national parties. 



OHAP. XI 



PAETY 125 



Other new parties which have appeared in recent years 
are those called Socialist or Communist. They are not, 
strictly speaking, class parties, for although they have many 
aims in common with the Labour parties, they base them- 
selves not on proposals for the benefit of the working class as 
such, but upon theoretic systems of economic doctrine which 
are held by many persons in all classes. Their emergence, 
coupled with that of Labour parties, has had the effect of 
drawing away from each of the old established parties many 
of its adherents. This has brought these old parties nearer 
together, for those who dislike the new doctrines or scent 
danger in the new proposals, begin to find the familiar dif- 
ferences between the old parties less important than is the 
coincidence of their opposition to the new parties. 1 In some 
cases accordingly the old parties have been fused into one; 
in others they have agreed to make common cause at elec- 
tions with one another. Questions relating to the distribu- 
tion of political power having been everywhere largely dis- 
posed of, the dividing lines between parties tend to be eco- 
nomic. The result has been to accentuate class sentiment, 
making a sharper division than previously existed between 
the richer and more conservative element in every country 
and that which is poorer and more disposed to experimental 
legislation. 

This, however, has been compatible with a tendency for 
the large parties to split up into smaller sections. There are 
shades in Conservatism, and even more shades in Radicalism 
and in Socialism, for the activity of thought and the disap- 
pearance of respect for authority multiply new doctrines, 
helping them to spread fast. Such a tendency makes for 
definiteness and sincerity in the views of each section or 
group, but it increases the difficulty of working the machinery 
of government. This difficulty is in some countries aggra- 
vated by the rise of parties founded in the interests of a par- 
ticular set of producers, such as is the Farmers' party in 
Canada, and the party of Peasants (i.e. small land-owning 
agriculturists and pastoralists) in Switzerland. 

Two other features characteristic of party in democratic 
countries deserve mention. The increase in the number of 
voting citizens and the disappearance of those distinctions of 
i See the Chapters on Australia in Part II., post. 



126 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

social rank which made the rich landowner the obvious leader 
in a rural district, as was the rich merchant in a city, have 
made organization more needful. Those parties which have 
behind them either an ecclesiastical or a labour organization 
are in this respect stronger than parties with no religious or 
class basis. The latter are therefore obliged to find funds to 
conduct propaganda and to pay their agents. The smaller 
parties, or the groups which appear in representative assem- 
blies, suffer from want of funds, having few adherents over 
the country at large, nor are they aided by contributions from 
capitalists, though the latter readily support a strong party 
capable of serving their commercial or financial interests. 
Poverty shortens the life of many groups or drives them to 
fusion, for " Publicity/' i.e. the advertising, in a direct or 
indirect form, now deemed essential to success, is so costly 
that money tends to become the sinews of politics as well as 
of war. 

In every party — and this is especially true of the United 
States and Britain — one may distinguish three sets of men. 
There are the national leaders, eminent persons who associate 
their own fortunes with those of the party and desire by it 
to obtain office and power. There is the mass of moderate 
men who have a general sympathy with the party aims, and 
have been accustomed to vote with it. The third class are 
zealots and care more for the principles or aims of the party 
than for its immediate victory. These are the men who do 
unpaid work in the constituencies and keep the local party 
machinery going. They summon the meetings of associa- 
tions, and generally carry their resolutions in the local meet- 
ings of the party which are attended by its more ardent mem- 
bers. Their enthusiasm, often coupled with inexperience, 
makes them eager to go full steam ahead, and their activity 
often enables them to commit the party, at its larger gather- 
ings, to a policy more extreme than is pleasing to the bulk of 
the members. The more prudent chiefs sometimes try to 
slow down the pace, but are not always able to do so in time, 
so it may befall that the party is officially pledged to pro- 
posals in advance not only of public opinion generally but 
even of the average opinion of its own members. The result 
is that the moderate members drop away, and may possibly 
drift into the opposite camp. This phenomenon is of course 



CHAP. XI 



PARTY 127 



more frequent in the parties of movement than in those of 
resistance, but even in the latter the formally declared atti- 
tude of a party may not truly represent its general sentiment, 
for the moderate men, because less keenly interested, usually 
take least part in the deliberations at which the attitude of 
the party is proclaimed and its course determined. Thus 
party spirit often appears to be hotter, and party antago- 
nisms more pronounced, than is really the case, for in a large 
nation the mass of the electors take their politics more coolly 
than is realized by those who derive their impressions from 
newspaper reports of party meetings. 

The power of Party Organization and the power of Party 
spirit are of course very different things, and not necessarily 
found together. If either should assume undue proportions, 
what remedies can be found for checking the undue power of 
an organization over its own members, and what can be done 
to soften the antagonisms which party spirit creates in a na- 
tion, disturbing its internal concord and weakening it in its 
relations with foreign powers? 

Law can do little or nothing. Though many countries 
have tried to repress by penal legislation factions from which 
the ruling power apprehended danger, only two seem to have 
attempted to regulate them. Czarist Kussia in the earlier 
days of the Duma allowed certain parties to apply for and 
obtain legalization. Many States in the American Union 
have created administrative Boards on which provision is 
made for the representation of both the great political parties, 
and nearly all have passed laws for regulating the nomination 
of party candidates by the members of the parties or by the 
voters at large. The rather disappointing results of these 
expedients are described in later chapters. 1 

Party spirit as a Force working for good or evil in public 
life is a matter which must be left to the citizens themselves. 
Upon them it must depend whether it is reasonable and tem- 
perate or violent and bitter. It is no greater a danger in 
democracies than elsewhere. So, too, experience seems to 
show that it is only the members of a party who can control 
the action of organizations and can keep them from being 
either perverted by astute party managers for their own 
selfish purposes, or used by honest extremists to launch pro- 
i See Chapters on the United States in Part II., post. 



128 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

posaJs which the party as a whole does not approve. The 
more a party lives by the principles for which it stands, the 
more it subordinates its own aims to the strength and unity 
J < of the whole people, and the more it is guided by men who can 
recognize whatever may be sound in the views of their op- 
ponents and prevent opposition from passing into enmity, 
the better will it serve the common interests of its country. 



/ 



/ 



CHAPTER XII 

LOCAL SELT^GOVERNMENT 

The beginnings of popular government were in small areas, 
rural communities and tiny cities, each with only a few hun- 
dreds or possibly thousands of free inhabitants. The earliest 
form it took was that of an assembly in which all the freemen 
met to discuss their common affairs, and in which, although 
the heads of the chief families exerted much influence, the 
mind and voice of the people could make itself felt. Such 
assemblies marked the emergence of men from barbarism into 
something approaching a settled and ordered society. In 
many places these communities lay within a monarchy, in 
others (as in Iceland) they were independent, but everywhere 
they accustomed the people to cherish a free spirit and learn 
to co-operate for common aims. First among these was joint 
defence against a neighbouring and hostile community. A 
second, important for the prevention of internal strife, was 
the settlement, by some kind of judicial method, of disputes 
between the members, frequently arising from the demand of 
compensation for the killing of some one whose kinsfolk were 
bound by custom to avenge his death, such blood-money being 
awarded by the assembly, or the elders, to the kin, who there- 
upon desisted from revenge. 1 A third was the disposal and 
management of land belonging to the local community 
(whether forest or pasture) not allotted in severalty to the 
members, or of arable land in which there were usually rights 
assigned to each individual, even if only for a limited period 
and subject to re-allotment when the period has expired. 
This was frequent among peoples of South Slavonic stock. 

1 Cf. Iliad, Book ix. 1. 628 and xviii. 498, with which compare the 
laws of the West Saxon King Ine; and many references in the Icelandic 
Sagas (see the author's Studies in History and Jurisprudence, Essay on 
Primitive Iceland). The custom of blood revenge, which is as old as 
the Pentateuch, is still alive in Albania and among the Pathans. Only 
recently did it vanish from Corsica, and it long remained among the 
peasantry of Ireland. 

129 
VOL. I K 



130 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pa*t i 

It existed till quite recently in the Russian Mir, and still 
exists in many parts of India. 

This self-governing assembly, though there are some races 
(such as the Celtic) in which we find little or no trace of it, 
was widely diffused, though its power or influence was 
greater in some countries than in others. A familiar exam- 
ple may be found in the Agora of Homeric Greece, in the 
Comitia of Rome, in the meeting of the People (Folk Mot) 
of the Angles and Saxons in England, in the Thing of the 
Norsemen in Norway and Iceland. That it is an institution 
not confined to any one stock of mankind appears from its 
presence among the Bantu races of South Africa, where it 
maintains a vigorous life in the Pitso of the Basutos and 
Bechuanas. 1 

In the process of time nations were formed by the expan- 
sion of these -mall communities, or by their fusion, or by 
their absorption into larger units. The other functions of 
the assembly were either assumed by the whole nation (as 

was defence) or transferred to special authorities. In the 

ancient Greek and Italic republics regular courts were set up. 
In most parts of Kuropo judicial functions passed to the 
feudal landowners, and ultimately, first in England and later 

in Scotland, to the king. Thus popular self-government came 

to Lose what may be called its political (including its mili- 
tary) and its judicial side. Bat it usually retained the right 
of managing whatever hind belonged to the community; and 
in some countries functions connected with the parish church, 
while afterwards other matters of local welfare came under 
its care. The only country in which the small autonomous 
unit Off the thirteenth century held its ground as a political 
unit was Switzerland, and particularly those Alpine valleys 
in which Bwisfl freedom had its origin. In a few cantons 

the LandeBgemeinde or primary assembly of the whole can- 
ton continues to meet to-day.- In England the Parish, orig- 
inally similar to the < 'ommune of continental Europe as an 
ecclesiastical unit and land holding body, had retained a fee- 
hie life, but for ecclesiastical purposes only, until it received 
a re-grant of Limited civil functions by a statute of 1894, 

i An account of the Pitso may be found in the author's Impressions 
of South Africa. 

'See Chftpitll on Switzerland in Part II., post. 



chap, xii LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 131 

while beyond the Atlantic the self-government of small areas 
had a new birth among the English who settled in the States 
of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Con- 
necticut. The Town (rural as well as urban) became a 
strong organism, drawing life not only from the English tra- 
ditions which the colonists brought with them, but also from 
the daily needs of a people dispersed in small groups over 
a wild country, who had to help one another in many ways, 
and defend themselves against native tribes. Thus the old 
Teutonic form of self-government has continued to flourish 
and to spread out over all the northern States of the American 
Union. 1 

The small communities here described may be called the 
tiny fountain-heads of democracy, rising among the rocks, 
sometimes lost altogether In their course, sometimes running 
underground to reappear at last in fuller volume. They 
suffice to show that popular government is not a new thing 
in the world, but was in many countries the earliest expres- 
sion of man's political instincts. It was a real misfortune 
for England — and the remark applies in a certain sense 
to Germany also — that while local self-government did main- 
tain itself in the county and borough it should in both have 
largely lost the popular character which once belonged to it, 
as it was a misfortune for Ireland and for France that this 
natural creation of political intelligence should not have de- 
veloped there. Many things that w r ent wrong in those four 
countries from the end of the sixteenth century onwards 
might have fared better under institutions like those of Swit- 
zerland or the Northern United States. 

Of the part to be assigned to Local Government in a mod- 
ern democracy, of its relations to the Central Government, 
and of the forms in which it works best, I propose to speak 
in a later chapter, following upon those which describe the 
working of democracy in six modern countries. Here, how- 
ever, a few words may be said as to the general service which 
self-government in small areas renders in forming the quali- 
ties needed by the citizen of a free country. It creates 
among the citizens a sense of their common interest in com- 
mon affairs, and of their individual as well as common duty 

1 See Chapters on United States, Part II., post. The word " Town " 
includes a rural as well as an urban area. 



w 



132 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

to take care that those affairs are efficiently and honestly ad- 
ministered. If it is the business of a local authority to 
mend the roads, to clean out the village well or provide a new 
pump, to see that there is a place where straying beasts may 
be kept till the owner reclaims them, to fix the number of 
cattle each villager may turn out on the common pasture, to 
give each his share of timber cut in the common woodland, 
every villager has an interest in seeing that these things are 
properly attended to. Laziness and the selfishness which is 
indifferent to whatever does not immediately affect a man's 
interests is the fault which most afflicts democratic communi- 
ties. Whoever learns to be public-spirited, active and up- 
right in the affairs of the village has learnt the first lesson of 
the duty incumbent on a citizen of a great country, just as, 
conversely, " he that is unfaithful in the least is unfaithful 
also in much." The same principle applies to a city. In it 
the elector can seldom judge from his own observation how 
things are being managed. But he can watch through the 
newspapers or by what he hears from competent sources 
whether the mayor and councillors and their officials are 
doing their work, and whether they are above suspicion of 
making illicit gains, and whether the taxpayer is getting full 
value for what he is required to contribute. So when the 
election comes he has the means of discovering the candidates 
with the best record and can cast his vote accordingly. 

Secondly: Local institutions train men not only to work 
/ y for others but also to work effectively with others. They de- 
velop common sense, reasonableness, judgment, sociability. 
Those who have to bring their minds together learn the -need 
for concession and compromise. A man has the opportunity 
of showing what is in him, and commending himself to his 
fellow-citizens. Two useful habits are formed, that of rec- 
ognizing the worth of knowledge and tact in public affairs 
and that of judging men by performance rather than by pro- 
fessions or promises. 

Criticisms are often passed on the narrowness of mind and 
the spirit of parsimony which are visible in rural local au- 
thorities and those who elect them. These defects are, how- 
ever, a natural product of the conditions of local life. The 
narrowness would be there in any case, and would affect the 
elector if he were voting for a national representative, but 



chap, xii LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT 133 

there would be less of that shrewdness which the practice of 
local government forms. Such faults must be borne with 
for the sake of the more important benefits which self-govern- 
ment produces. The main thing is that everybody, peasant 
and workman as well as shopkeeper and farmer, should join 
in a common public activity, and feel that he has in his own 
neighbourhood a sphere in which he can exercise his own 
judgment and do something for the community. Seeing the 
working, on a small scale, of the principle of responsibility 
to the public for powers conferred by them, he is better fitted 
to understand its application in affairs of larger scope. 

These good results have been sometimes wanting in munic- 
ipal governments, especially in Transatlantic cities where 
the rapid growth of enormous populations has created ab- 
normal conditions, making it impossible for the citizens to 
have such a knowledge of one another as is needed to secure 
a wise choice of councils or administrative officials. Of 
these I shall speak elsewhere. Meanwhile it is enough to 
observe that the countries in which democratic government 
has most attracted the interest of the people and drawn talent 
from their ranks have been Switzerland and the United 
States, especially those northern and western States in which 
rural local government has been most developed. These ex- 
amples justify the maxim that the best school of democracy, 
and the best guarantee for its success, is the practice of local 
self-government. 



CHAPTER XIII 

TRADITIONS 

Moribus antiquis stat res Romuna virisque 

What Habit is to an individual during the brief term of 
his existence here, Traditions are to a nation whose life ex- 
tends over hundreds or thousands of years. In them dwells 
the moral continuity of its existence. They link each 
generation to those that have gone before and sum up its 
collective memories. To understand their action upon the 
nation, let us begin by considering how habit affects the 
individual. 

Habit, that is to say, the tendency of each man to go on 
thinking and acting upon the same general lines, is due not 
only to hereditary predispositions rooted in a race or in a 
family, but also to certain fundamental ideas which each per- 
son either forms for himself or has received from instruction, 
or from the example of others who have influenced him in that 
formative period of life when the mind and character are 
still comparatively fluid. Once such ideas have been solidi- 
fied, they constitute, for nearly all persons, the permanent 
basis of conduct and the standard by which they judge both 
themselves and others. Most men are indolent, prone to 
follow the line of least resistance in thinking as well as in 
acting, so they find it easier to apply the maxims already in 
their minds than to think out afresh on each occasion every 
serious question. That would make life too burdensome. 
Here habit helps; for where it is so strong that there is no 
need felt for turning the mind on to examine the question, 
judgment and action in minor matters become almost auto- 
matic. A man's disposition to imitate others, or to repeat 
himself, has its source in physiological facts, certain in their 
action though obscure in their causes, which I cannot attempt 

to deal with here. 

134 



chap, xhi TRADITIONS 135 

Psychologists since Aristotle have dwelt on the supreme 
importance of habit as the basis of moral action. Once set- 
tled, it is the most constant factor, especially in those persons, 
everywhere the majority, to whom independent thinking is 
an effort for which they have neither taste nor talent. Un- 
der its power, action becomes instinctive. Parents, teachers, 
the public opinion of the school, stamp certain notions and 
rules of conduct on the soft metal of a young mind, and when 
the metal has hardened they are not readily effaced. For 
one who can think out a doubtful ethical question, there are 
ten who can remember what they were taught to believe. If 
men are from childhood accustomed to regard certain conduct 
as honourable, because approved by the general sentiment of 
their fellows, they do not ask why that should be so, but 
promptly judge themselves and others by the standards they 
have accepted. If, on the contrary, they either have not im- 
bibed, or have not made for themselves, such standards, they 
yield to the desire or passion of the moment, or are deterred 
from obeying it only by a fear of the consequences. So when 
one generation after another of a people has grown up valuing 
certain virtues and believing that the welfare of the nation 
depends on their maintenance, when it respects those who are 
faithful to virtue, and reveres the memory of those heroes of 
the past in whom virtue shone forth with peculiar lustre, the 
virtues and the memories become a part of the people's heri- 
tage, and are cherished as an ancient family prizes the shield 
and sword which a forefather carried in battle. In one of 
the finer and more impressionable spirits, the glory of na- 
tional heroes becomes a living force, part of himself, inspir- 
ing him as he reads its history. He is proud of belonging to 
such a stock. He feels a sense of duty to it. He asks him- 
self what made the nation great, and finds the source of 
greatness in what are deemed its characteristic virtues. 

Something similar is observable on a small scale in a pro- 
fession, or in any body, such as a college, with a long cor- 
porate life behind it. Its members feel a measure of pride 
in belonging to such a body. The mantle of old distinction 
falls upon them, and helps to maintain a high standard of 
conduct. It is of course only persons of superior intelligence 
and some historic knowledge in whom any such sentiments 
are strong, but it is usually such men who lead the nation in 



136 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

action, or instruct it by their words, or set in public life an 
example wbich the average man respects. Thus there is 
formed in the people a standard by which statesmen are 
tested, an ideal created to which they must live up, if they are 
to receive the people's confidence. Truthfulness, honour, un- 
selfishness, courage are enshrined as parts of that ideal. In 
a democracy where the sentiment of equality has gone so far 
as to make men unwilling to recognize the authority of the 
wise or defer to the counsels of experience, references to what 
their ancestors felt or did may still command respect. And 
while the nation's own self-esteem willingly appropriates such 
virtues as its own, those who aspire to leadership feel that 
they must try to possess or seem to possess them. If they 
are high-minded, their good intentions are strengthened ; if of 
common clay, they must at least pay homage to the ideal 
by not falling too far below it. Nobody wants to be com- 
pared to " the fause Menteith " 1 or to those whom history 
has branded as unworthy, such as the timorous pontiff who 
made " the great refusal." 2 Thus the ideals of public con- 
duct, and the recollections of those in whom the ideals were 
exemplified, become the traditions of a nation, deemed by it 
to be a part of its national character, most familiar and pow- 
erful when embodied in famous persons who are the shining 
lights of its history. 

The best instances of the influence of such ideals and tra- 
ditions are to be found in the histories of more or less popu- 
larly governed countries, and especially of Rome, of England, 
of Switzerland, and of the United States. 

In Rome the virtue most honoured was that of devotion to 
the State. Decius giving himself to death in order to secure 
victory over the Samnites, the legendary Curtius leaping 
into the gulf, Regulus returning to a cruel death at Carthage 
rather than advise the Senate to sanction an unfavourable 
peace, even Manlius Torquatus condemning his own son to 
death in order that military discipline might be maintained, 
were real or imagined examples held up for imitation to the 
Roman youth, and for a long time serving to inspire it. Pa- 
triotism possessed the mind of the Swiss before it had laid 

1 The person who betrayed William Wallace to the English. 

2 Dante, Inferno, canto III. v. 60. The reference is supposed to be to 
Pope Celestine V. 



chap, xiii TRADITIONS 137 

hold on any other people in mediaeval Europe. The memory 
of those three confederates of Grutli who led the revolt 
against the oppressions of the Count of Hapsburg, and of 
Arnold von Winkelried sacrificing himself in Decian fashion 
to win the fight at Sempach, have sunk into the heart of every 
Swiss. They helped to form the sentiment of dauntless 
loyalty in the Swiss Guards who perished at the Tuileries 
in 1792, fighting not even for their own country, but in de- 
fence of the monarch with whom they had taken service. 
And in Switzerland patriotism has been turned into a peace- 
ful channel in creating a sense of the civic duty which every 
man owes to his canton. Nowhere in the world has this sense 
been so strong, or done so much to make men take an interest 
in domestic politics and bring so much intelligence to bear 
upon it. It shows us a tradition embodied in a habit of daily 
life. 

In England whose national independence was never threat- 
ened from the Norman Conquest until the time when Bona- 
parte was encamped at Boulogne, the growth of national tra- 
ditions was more gradual and less definitely connected with 
particular historical cases. Nevertheless there were incidents 
from the days of Magna Charta down to the revolution of 
1688 which created in the more educated classes a steady at- 
tachment to liberty as well as to law, law being regarded not 
merely as the enforcement of order but as the safeguard of 
liberty. Whatever unconstitutional acts might be done by 
any king or minister, no one in either English party ven- 
tured, after the fall of the Stuarts, to disparage liberty as a 
fundamental principle. 

Taken in their widest sense Traditions include all the in- 
fluences which the Past of a nation exerts upon its Present, 
in forming its thoughts and accustoming its will to act upon 
certain fixed lines. The traditions of valour are, of course, 
those most generally cherished in every country, because every 
one understands and honours courage. In mediaeval Spain, 
however, the crusading character of the wars waged against 
the Moors for four centuries formed not only a love of battle 
but also a religious intolerance which is not yet extinct. Its 
strength is shown by the violence of the anti-clerical recoil 
among Spanish anarchists. The victorious campaigns of 
Frederick the Great which made Prussia a nation, created 



138 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

also that spirit of militarism and that supremacy of military 
ideals which a series of successful wars brought to their 
highest development a century after his time. In Japan the 
religious devotion to a dynasty whose origin is lost in the 
mist of fable combined with the personal devotion of the 
feudal retainer to his lord to produce that chivalric self-for- 
getting loyalty to State and Nation which has made the Jap- 
anese warrior feel it a privilege to offer up his life in the 
national cause. 1 Nowhere does this sort of loyalty seem to 
have equally pervaded all classes of a people. 

Besides these traditions of honour and dignity in conduct 
there are also certain ideas or principles of policy which 
have so often been recognized by a nation, and applied in the 
management of its affairs, that they have become a part of its 
mental equipment. Some of these ideas have been embodied 
in its institutions, and by them the institutions have stood. 
Some are associated with events in national history which 
approved their soundness. In the United States, for in- 
stance, the dogmas contained in the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence and the view of policy known as the Monroe Doc- 
trine, the theory of the sovereignty of the people and the 
necessity of separating the executive, legislative, and judicial 
powers, have by general consent become axiomatic. Abiding 
foundations of policy glide into other principles which have 
come to so inhere in national consciousness as to seem parts 
of national character. Such, for the English, are the respect 
for law as law, the feeling that every citizen is bound to come 
forward in its support, the confidence in the Courts which 
administer it — a confidence not felt in the seventeenth cen- 
tury, because then not yet deserved. Such in France is the 
passion for equality, still more recent, and a deference to 
executive authority greater than Englishmen or Americans 
feel, together with a passionate attachment to the soil of 
France which has replaced the old feudal attachment to the 
person of the sovereign. 

Among traditions, those which approve and maintain prin- 
ciples and habits of political action have been due to the 
people itself, guided by wise leaders, while those which have 

i The famous story of the forty-seven Ronins who died for their 
chief is familiar to every Japanese. The temple at Tokyo where their 
figures are reverently shown has become almost a place of pilgrimage. 



CHAP, xni 



TRADITIONS 139 



a moral character and secure respect for public virtue, are 
generally due to the influence and example of some famous 
man who so impressed his contemporaries as to become a 
model for later generations. The classic instance comes from 
the United States. Its people had the singular good fortune 
to find in the beginning of their national life a hero whose 
character became a tradition for them of all that was highest 
and purest in statesmanship. George Washington set a 
standard of courage, calmness, dignity, and uprightness by 
which every public man's conduct was to be tried. Seventy 
years later the tradition of unselfish patriotism, as well as of 
firmness and of faith in the power of freedom was, so to 
speak, reconsecrated by Abraham Lincoln. Two such lives 
(the former of which had much to do with inspiring the lat- 
ter) have been an asset of incomparable value to the people 
among whom they were lived. When the War of Secession 
had ended and the dawn of reconciliation began after a time 
to appear, Northern as well as Southern men found in the 
memory of Washington a bond of reunion, for it was a 
memory cherished and honoured by both alike. 

Habits can be bad as well as good, though when found in a 
people they are commonly attributed not so much to historical 
causes as to the inherent depravity of mankind, allowed to 
indulge itself unchecked, and infecting one generation after 
another, because there was neither legal penalty nor public 
disapproval to restrain it. An offence that is familiar and 
goes unpunished is deemed venial and excites no surprise. 
Corruption and malversation were common in the Greek re- 
publics, even among brilliant leaders. They were common 
in the later days of Rome among ambitious politicians, who 
were wont to bribe the voters, or the jurors before whom they 
were prosecuted, with money extorted from the provincial 
subjects of the republic. The laws were stringent, but the 
offenders frequently escaped. Among the statesmen of Italy, 
and indeed of Europe generally, in the fifteenth and six- 
teenth century there was little honour. Machiavelli was no 
worse than others in his means, and better than most in his 
aims. In Russia, under the Tsars, corruption was the rule 
among officials, civil and military. In China it successfully 
overcame, a few years ago, the nascent virtue of many among 
the young enthusiasts who had proclaimed a republic. In 



140 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

England bribery was rife in Parliament under Walpole and 
in parliamentary constituencies till the middle of last cen- 
tury. It was, for the briber, a matter of jest, not of social 
stigma, the habit being an old one. So in tropical America 
there are some republics in which the ruling faction has for 
many a year " made the elections," and many in which a 
President is expected to enrich himself, and leaves a good 
name if he has shot comparatively few of his opponents. 1 

Traditions are built up slowly but crumble quickly, just as 
it takes longer to form in an individual the virtue that will 
resist temptation than it takes to break down what had seemed 
to be a settled habit. Seldom can he who has once suc- 
cumbed to strong inducements be thereafter trusted to stand 
firm. 2 

Various have been the causes that have weakened or de- 
stroyed old traditions. Sometimes the quality of a popula- 
tion is changed ; it may be, as happened in Rome, by the 
impoverishment of the bulk of the old citizen stock and the 
increase in the number of f reedmen ; it may be by the influx 
of a crowd of immigrants, ignorant of the history of their 
new country, irresponsive to sentiments which the old in- 
habitants have cherished. The English stock to which the 
farmers and artisans of Massachusetts and Connecticut be- 
longed has now become a minority in these States. 

There are times when under the pressure of some grave 
national crisis, such as a foreign or even perhaps a civil war, 
a nation resigns some of its liberties into the hands of the 
Executive, or adopts new methods of government calculated 
to strengthen its position in the world. If the period of 
suspension of liberties be short and the attachment -of the 
people to their old institutions exceptionally strong, no harm 
may be done. This proved to be the case after the American 
War of Secession, when constitutional government was re- 
stored uninjured. But there is always a risk that the stream 
may not return to its old channel. After a great war a nation 
is never, for better or worse, what it was before. Some- 
times the waves of internal discord run so high that the tradi- 

i The Irish tradition of " voting agin the Government " was formed 
in the first half of last century, and was not without its justification. 
2 Nee vera virtus, quum semel excidit, 
Curat reponi deterioribus. 
So Horace ( Odes, iii. 5 ) . 



chap, xni TKADITIONS 141 

tion of devotion to common national interests is forgotten in 
the strife of religions or of classes. Sometimes the intel- 
lectual development of a people has sapped the foundations 
of its beliefs without replacing them by new conceptions of 
duty fit to stand the strain of new conditions. The most fa- 
miliar instance is that of the Greek republics in the age of 
Socrates when the teachings of some eminent Sophists, pul- 
verizing the simple belief in gods who punished perjury and 
bad faith, were representing justice as merely the advantage 
of the stronger. Here the traditions first affected were re- 
ligious and ethical, but an old system of beliefs and habits 
hangs together ; when the religious part of it is smitten, other 
parts feel the shock. Traditions last longest in peoples who 
live amid simple conditions and whose minds are slow and 
steady rather than swift. The Roman spirit was more con- 
servative than that of the highly susceptible Greeks, as the 
English have been less prone to change than have the nimbler- 
minded French. No tradition lasts for ever, not even in 
China. When it shows signs of decay, the best chance of 
saving it lies in reinforcing an ancient sentimental reverence 
by considerations drawn from reason and experience. These 
are supplied by history, the teaching of which in schools and 
universities might in most countries do more than it has yet 
done to fill the people's mind with memories of what is 
finest in its history and to dwell upon the worth of experience 
as a guide in politics. 

The traditions of virtue shown in political life are not 
so well remembered by all classes of any people as are those 
of warlike valour or disinterested patriotism, because they 
appeal less to the imagination, and are more apt to be asso- 
ciated with those who have been the leaders of parties rather 
than of the nation. Nelson and Garibaldi are names more 
popular than Hampden, Mazzini, or Kossuth. Even in 
Switzerland there are few outstanding civil figures — and 
hardly any known outside its own borders — to whom tradi- 
tions are attached. Appealing to reason rather than to emo- 
tion, they are less promising themes for rhetoric. But the 
greatest statesmen have rendered services greater than any 
rendered by arms, except indeed where the war was for na- 
tional independence. The traditional love of liberty, the tra- 
ditional sense of duty to the community, be it great or small, 



142 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

the traditional respect for law and wish to secure reforms by 
constitutional rather than by violent means — these were the 
habits engrained in the mind and will of Englishmen and 
Swiss which have helped each people to build up its free 
institutions from rude beginnings, and have enabled those 
institutions to continue their beneficent work. Those tra- 
ditions carried across the sea rendered the same service in 
America. When similar institutions, however skilfully de- 
vised, are set down among those who, like the peoples of trop- 
ical America, have no such traditions, the institutions work 
imperfectly or do not work at all, because men have not that 
common basis of mutual understandings, that reciprocal will- 
ingness to effect a compromise, that, accepted standard of pub- 
lic honour, that wish to respect certain conventions and keep 
within certain limits, which long habit has formed in the 
minds of Englishmen or Americans or Switzers. 






CHAPTEK XIV 

THE PEOPLE 

The Sovereignty of the People is the basis and the watch- 
word of democracy. It is a faith and a dogma to which in 
our time every frame of government has to conform, and by 
conformity to which every institution is tested. We shall 
have, in the course of our examination of the working of 
many forms of government, to observe in what ways doc- 
trine is applied to practice, and how far each of the methods 
of applying it gives good results. It is therefore worth while 
to begin by enquiring what that sovereignty imports, and who 
are those that exercise it ? 

What is the People ? The word has always had a fascina- 
tion. It appeals to the imagination by suggesting something 
vast and all-embracing, impersonal and intangible. We are 
in the midst of a multitude and a part of it, and yet we do 
not know its thoughts and cannot forecast its action, even as 
we stand on the solid earth and cannot tell when it will be 
shaken by an earthquake ; or as we dwell under and constantly 
watch the sky yet can seldom say when tempests will arise and 
lightnings flash forth, or as we live in the midst of the vibrat- 
ing ether and have no sense-perceptions of its presence. 
There seems to be something about the mind and will of the 
People so far transcending human comprehension as to have 
a sort of divine quality, because it is a force not only un- 
predictable but irresistible. It has the sacredness of an 
oracle. The old saying, Vox populi, vox Dei, was meant to 
convey that when the People speaks, it speaks by that will of 
the Higher Powers which men cannot explain but are forced 
to obey. 

This kind of feeling seems grounded, consciously or un- 
consciously, on an assumption that the People cannot go 
wrong. Wisdom must dwell in it because it includes all the 
wisdom there is in the nation, and Justice must dwell in it 

143 



144 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS past i 

because it includes all there is of justice; and Justice must 
be present even more certainly than wisdom, because the in- 
justice and selfishness of individuals and groups, each of 
which has its own conflicting interests, will be swallowed up 
in the justice which is the common interest of all. More- 
over, man is naturally prone to worship Power. That is an 
impulse that underlies all religion. To-day the people are 
the ultimate source of Power. Their will, be it wise or un- 
wise, must prevail. Just as an individual man is carried 
away by the passion that sways a vast crowd filled by one 
emotion and purpose, so when that purpose is universalized to 
embrace the nation of which he and all the others in the 
crowd are a trifling part, he realizes the insignificance of 
each and the grandeur of all. He is awed by something 
mystical in the conception. That which was once the divine 
Right of the king has become the overriding Majesty of the 
People. 

Passing from these abstractions, let us see what in various 
concrete cases the term People has been taken to mean, and 
what questions have arisen as to the persons or classes in- 
cluded under it. Does it in any given country cover, or 
ought it to cover, the whole population or only those who 
are legally " citizens," i.e. entitled to share in the govern- 
ment by expressing their mind and will on public questions ? 
In the ancient world the right of governing went with the 
obligation to fight. That obligation fell upon all free adult 
males, so that the army meant in practice the voters, and the 
voters (subject to exceptions hardly worth noting) meant the 
army. Duty and power went together. This view would not 
be accepted now either in countries which have extended the 
suffrage to women, or by those persons who deny that there 
should be any general obligation to serve the country in 
arms. Are resident aliens part of the people, or ought they 
to be deemed such, at least so far as to have a right to be 
after a time admitted to citizenship? Even if they are not 
permitted to vote how far are their wishes to be regarded ? * 

i It might be argued that those aliens who are taxed ought to be 
represented. The question is usually unimportant, but there is one 
European country (Switzerland) in which aliens constitute 15 per cent 
of the population; and the exclusion of foreigners from the suffrage in 
the Transvaal was the chief grievance out of which the South African 
War arose in 1899. 



chap, xiv THE PEOPLE 145 

If there is any distinct section of a nation few of whose mem- 
bers concern themselves with public affairs, is it to be deemed 
a part of the people for political purposes? If most of the 
members of such a section have no political opinions, can they 
be said to share in Popular Sovereignty, whether or no they 
vote, for if they do, they vote as others bid them? This 
question was much discussed in England and America be- 
fore women were admitted to the suffrage ; and in France it 
is still under discussion. Where a racially distinct body of 
unwilling subjects is included within a State, as were the 
Poles in the German Empire before 1919, or the German- 
speaking Tyrolese in the Italian kingdom since 1919, are they 
to be reckoned as part of the people? Where a race, con- 
fessedly backward, remains socially distinct from the rest of 
the population, is it to be counted as a part of the people, 
or if some few of its members are admitted to share in power 
as voters, does that imply that the whole body shall be so 
counted ? This point is raised by the position of the Kafirs 
in the Union of South Africa, of the Chinese in Australasia, 
of the negroes in the Southern States of America. They are 
so sharply differentiated from their white neighbours by the 
fact that their chief interest is not in the general welfare of 
the country but in obtaining for themselves an equal status 
and the effective protection of the law that their wishes and 
hopes do not move on the same plane. When a white orator 
in Louisiana talks of " our people " he is thinking of whites 
only ; but if he is speaking in Ohio, are negroes included ? * 
Further questions arise when we consider how the people 
has to express its will. This, formerly done by a shout of 
the assembled freemen, now takes the form of voting. In 
voting, as normally in fighting, that oldest method of settling 
differences, numbers prevail. The majority is taken to speak 
for the whole. This need not be the majority of the whole 
nation, for the votes may be taken in some artificial divisions, 
as in the Roman Republic it was in " centuries " or in 

i There is a constantly recurring fallacy which makes men uncon- 
■ciously think of the majority as if it were the whole. When we talk 
of " the American people," we forget the many millions of non-Ameri- 
canized immigrants ; when we talk of " the English people " we forget 
the non-English elements in Britain ; when we talk of " the Irish people " 
we forget the inhabitants of Ulster ; when we talk of " the people of 
Ulster " we forget that large section which is politically and religiously 
out of sympathy with the majority. 

VOL. I L 



146 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pam i 

" tribes/' and as it is in the American Republic (at a presi- 
dential election) by States. Whatever be the mode, the 
greater number must, in any ordered State, prevail, and the 
lesser must submit. But although the legal authority goes 
with the majority, does the moral authority of the people go 
with it? What presumption is there that the majority, espe- 
cially if it be small, is right ? Is there likely to be any more 
wisdom in the Yeas than in the Nays? If it be true that 
most men are governed by emotion, and few men by reason, a 
cynic might argue that the presumption was the other way. 
Can one say that because the people are always right a de- 
cision reached by a majority of five in a body of five hundred 
will be right? In the General Councils of the mediaeval 
Church it was asked whether when a point of doctrine had 
to be decided by a vote, infallibility dwelt in the odd man, 
and whether, if so, it would not have been quite as easy, and 
much more impressive, for Divine Providence to arrange 
that the majority should be larger. 

The cynic already referred to goes a step farther, and asks 
what ground there is for the trust reposed in the justice and 
wisdom of the People. " Why should they be less liable to 
error than monarchs or oligarchies ? What is there in a na- 
tion of twenty or forty or one hundred millions of men, 
women, and children except so many individual human 
beings? Whence does there come into this mass any more 
wisdom or goodness than exists in these individuals, a large 
number of whom we all know to have little knowledge and 
less wisdom ? The collective wisdom of the People is but the 
sum of their individual wisdoms, its excellence the sum of 
their excellences. A thing does not become different because 
you call it by a collective name. The Germans, a philosoph- 
ical race, no doubt talk of the State as not only grander but 
also wiser than the individuals who compose the State, but 
that may be because their government took pains to gather 
as much trained wisdom as possible into the service of the 
State, so that the bureaucracy became a treasure-house of 
knowledge and experience beyond what any individuals can 
command. The State, they argued, is wiser than its com- 
ponent parts, because those who administer it are the re- 
fined quintessence distilled from all the sources of individual 
wisdom. Democratic nations do not attempt thus to con- 



chap, xiv THE PEOPLE 147 

centrate knowledge and skill in a body of State servants; 
they put their faith in the individuals who come to the poll- 
ing-booth. It is not true, as is alleged, that the selfishnesses 
of many individuals cancel one another, so as to produce a 
general unselfishness; rather may it be said that the selfish 
aims of men and sections of men are the materials with 
which the crafty politician plays, turning them to his own 
ends, giving to each section favours pernicious to the whole 
community. 

" Every crowd poses as the people, and affects to speak in 
its name. The larger the crowd, the less is it guided by rea- 
son and the more by its emotions. The First Crusade was 
determined by a gathering at Clermont in Auvergne, when 
the mighty multitude is said to have shouted ' Deus id VultS 
But no one had weighed the difficulties of the enterprise, and 
sixty thousand of those who were the first to start perished 
long before they had approached the goal of pilgrimage. 
Have we not all seen how often the people err in their choice 
of representatives and how often their representatives err in 
their decisions on matters of policy ? They admit their errors 
by frequently reversing those decisions. 

" The people generally mean well. But what is the people 
for practical purposes when it comes to vote? Many, in 
some countries one half, and at some elections even more, ab- 
stain. How many of the thousands or tens of thousands who 
come to the polling-booths have any real acquaintance with 
the issues they are to decide, or with the qualities and the 
records of the candidates from among whom they are to 
choose their representatives and officials? How many, on 
the other hand, are voting merely because some one has 
brought them and told them that A, or B, is their man? 
Could the minds of most be examined, we should find that 
the vote cast did not express their individual wills, but rather 
the will of a group of leaders and wire-pullers who have put 
out the ( party ticket.' A decision no doubt there must be, 
and this may be the only way of getting it. But why bow 
down and worship the judgment of the people unless they 
are to be deemed to act, like a General Council of the Church, 
under Divine guidance ? Is this the meaning of vox populi, 
vox Dei?" 

Some of the questions raised by the critics whose views I 



148 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS past i 

have stated will be found, when we proceed to consider the 
practical working of popular government, to have been an- 
swered by the nations that have adopted that government, 
each for itself in its own way. But it is worth while to 
consider the causes which have given power to that faith in 
the people which has been for several generations a potent 
and pervasive force in politics. 

It began as a combative and reforming force, a protest 
against monarchical government and class government. Men 
who saw the evil wrought by the overbearing arrogance of a 
ruling class saw the remedy in the transfer of authority to 
the whole body of a nation. Exclusive or even predominant 
power was a temptation to selfishness. Power shared by all 
would be honestly exercised for the benefit of all. 

In the course of efforts to get rid of class rule, the con- 
trast drawn between the enfranchised classes and the unen- 
franchised mass outside made men think of the latter as 
" the people," giving the word a significance almost equiva- 
lent to what it is now the fashion to call the " proletariate." 
This was the more natural because that part of the nation was 
the more numerous part. To it the more enthusiastic re- 
former attributed those virtues in which the rich had been 
found wanting. It was believed that by sinking a deep shaft 
into the humbler strata of society the springs might be tapped 
of a simple honesty and sense of justice which would reno- 
vate politics. The association of poverty with simplicity and 
of luxury with corruption is an old one. In the Golden Age 
there was no wretchedness because there were no rich. Virgil, 
who talks of the city crowd as an ignobile vulgus, tells us- that 
when Justice quitted the earth her last footprints were among 
the tillers of the soil. The latest echo of the old sentiment is 
found in the pastoral poetry of the eighteenth century. Yet 
those who thus idealized the hand-workers and thought first 
of them when they talked of " the people," did not mean to 
represent them as a class which should predominate and be 
deemed, because it was the largest, entitled to be the exponent 
of the national will. Rather was it thought that the inter- 
mingling in political action of all classes would give unity 
and strength to the nation as one body, because each would 
make its own contribution. Harmony would give solidity. 
When men were thinking not of class interests but of the 



chap, xiv THE PEOPLE 149 

national welfare, there would be less discord. Classes are 
naturally selfish ; the People cannot be, for it is the welfare 
of all that they must desire. The generation in which these 
ideas sprang up and prevailed were influenced by abstract 
ideas and optimistic theories. As their experience extended 
only to cases in which a small privileged class had abused its 
authority to the prejudice of the whole community, it did 
not occur to them that a single class which constituted a 
majority of the whole might be possessed by a similar self- 
regarding spirit. They would indeed have grieved to think 
that this could happen, for they hoped to be rid of classes 
altogether, popular rule being to them the antithesis to class 
rule. 

With these conceptions there went a belief in him whom 
they called the " common man," or, as we should say, the 
average man. He is taken to be the man of broad common 
sense, mixing on equal terms with his neighbours, forming a 
fair unprejudiced judgment on every question, not viewy or 
pedantic like the man of learning, nor arrogant, like the man 
of wealth, but seeing things in a practical, businesslike, and 
withal kindly, spirit, pursuing happiness in his own way, 
and willing that every one else should do so. Such average 
men make the bulk of the people, and are pretty sure to go 
right, because the publicity secured to the expression of opin- 
ion by speech and in print will supply them with ample mate- 
rials for judging what is best for all. 

The experiences of recent years have dimmed the hope that 
class antagonisms would disappear under the rule of the 
People as a whole, and that the admission of all to a share 
in power would make every element of a nation rely on con- 
stitutional methods for curing whatever evils legislation can 
cure. Faith in the people was meant to be faith in the whole 
people, and must suffer when a people is distracted by class 
war. Yet whatever cynical critics may say, there remains a 
large measure of truth in that faith as it inspired the poets 
and philosophers of democracy a century ago. Where rights 
and duties are shared by all, there is full opportunity for 
ideas to make their way, for arguments to be heard, for proj- 
ects to be considered. The unrestricted interchange of 
thought works for good. In the intermixture and collision 
of views a breadth of result is attained. Truth and wisdom 



150 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 



have their chance, and truth, in an intelligent people, has a 
better chance than error. That Average Man to whom we 
recur when we talk of the People is in most countries neither 
captivated by theories nor swept off his feet by passion. If 
he does not, as some have fancied, become by the grant of 
citizenship fit for the functions of citizenship, he is usually 
raised to a higher level by the sense of a duty thrown on him, 
and has a sense of justice and fairness sometimes wanting in 
members of a privileged class. He may have limited knowl- 
edge and no initiative, yet be able to form, especially if he 
has a chance of seeing them at close quarters, a shrewd judg- 
ment of men. His instincts are generally sound, nor is he 
insensible to high ideals when presented to him in a form 
which makes them plain to him. What he lacks in knowledge 
he often makes up for by a sympathetic comprehension of the 
attitude of his fellow-men. Thus there is a sense in which 
the People are wiser than the wisest person or group. Abra- 
ham Lincoln, whom no one ever surpassed in knowing how 
to deal with men, summarized the results of his observation 
in the famous sentence, " You can fool all the people some 
of the time and some of the people all the time, but you can't 
fool all the people all the time." 

If this dictum of the great President seems severe in its 
recognition of the risk that the people may hastily commit a 
fatal error, it is none the less a tribute to their open-minded- 
ness, to the value of an abounding variety of views and of 
free criticism, to the probability that with due consideration 
things will go well. Where the people rule, you cannot stifle 
independent views. You cannot presume on the ignorance 
of the people, nor on the appearance of apathy they may 
show, nor on the power party organization may acquire over 
them. If you can get at the people — for that is the dif- 
ficulty — things will usually go well. But the people must 
have time. 



CHAPTER XV 

PUBLIC OPINION 

All power springs from the People. This axiom ac- 
cepted, the question follows: How is the People to exercise 
its power? By what means shall its mind and will be de- 
livered ? The answer given in all constitutional countries is, 
By Voting, i.e. or, as J. P. Lowell said, by counting heads 
instead of breaking them. Voting, an invention of the an- 
cient Greek and Italian republics, has been adopted in all 
civilized States, whether, as in Switzerland and in many 
States of the North American Union, it is used to express 
directly the people's judgment upon a proposition submitted 
by Initiative or by Referendum, or is applied to the choice 
of persons to represent the people in an assembly, or to act 
on their behalf as officials. 1 

But voting, though everywhere practised, has nowhere 
given complete satisfaction. The faults charged on it as a 
method of applying the popular will to self-government may 
be summarized as follows. 

The purposes of the people cannot be adequately expressed 

through persons chosen to represent them, for these persons 

may innocently misconceive or dishonestly misrepresent the 

wishes of the people, nor can any instructions given by the 

people remove this danger. Moreover, any election of repre- 

resentatives is an imperfect expression of the views on public 

policy of the voters, because it turns largely on the personal 

merits of the candidates, not on the doctrines they profess. 

1 The oldest method of ascertaining the wishes of the assembled people 
was by a calling for a shout of " Yea " or " Nay." This custom con- 
tinued at parliamentary elections in England till the Hustings were 
abolished by the Ballot Act of 1872, and it still survives in both Houses 
of the British Parliament, the Speaker calling for the " Ayes " and 
" Noes," and ordering a division only when one or the other section chal- 
lenges his statement that the "Ayes" or "Noes" (as the case may be) 
" have it." In the House of Lords the words used are " Contents " and 
"Not Contents," in the Convocation of the University of Oxford 
" Placet " and " Non placet." 

151 



152 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

There may, moreover, be among the voters many who, hav- 
ing no mind of their own to express, give their vote at the 
bidding or under the influence of other persons. Some may 
have been intimidated or bribed. Some take no interest in 
the matter and, in default of personal knowledge, merely obey 
their party organization. Thus what purports to be the will 
of the people is largelv a factitious product, not really their 
will. 

In voting, every vote has the same effective value. One 
man may have conscience, knowledge, experience, judgment. 
Another may lack all these, yet his vote counts for just as 
much in the choice of a representative or the decision of a 
momentous issue. The wisest and the most foolish are put 
on the same level. Opinions are counted, not weighed. 

Is there any answer to these criticisms or remedy for these 
alleged evils? 

The first criticism is accepted as valid by that large body 
of opinion which, advocating direct popular voting on as many 
questions as possible, seeks to have the Initiative and Ref- 
erendum methods adopted wherever constitutional govern- 
ment exists. Others, emphasizing the risk that representa- 
tives may fail to give effect to the people's wish, desire to 
make the mandate delivered at an election imperative and 
precise, and to give the people a power of recalling a repre- 
sentative whose action they disapprove. 

The second evil has been in many countries reduced by laws 
against bribery and intimidation, but where these tangible 
offences are absent, no remedy seems possible, for how can 
any one know how far a voter has a mind of his own, or is 
merely an instrument in other hands ? He may not himself 
know. 

The third objection taken goes down to the root difficulty 
of democratic government, and has been made the ground of 
the severest arraignments of the People as a Ruling Power. 
An attempt was made in some of the ancient republics to give 
proportionately greater weight in voting, not indeed to virtue 
and wisdom, but to property and (implicitly) to education, 
by dividing the citizens into classes or sections, and allotting 
to each a single collective vote, determined by the majority 
within the section. The richer sort were placed in several of 
such sections and the poorer in others, each of these latter 



chap, xv PUBLIC OPINION 153 

containing a larger number of voters than the sections of the 
richer citizens. Thus the votes of the richer sections bal- 
anced those of the poorer, i.e. the voting power of numbers 
was balanced by the power of voting wealth. Similarly, by 
the constitution of Belgium persons possessing certain prop- 
erty or educational qualifications were formerly given three 
or two votes each, the ordinary citizen having only one. This 
Belgian plan has now been abolished ; and is not likely to be 
tried elsewhere. It was proposed in England many years 
ago, but then rejected on the ground, inter alia, that the rich 
had various means of exerting influence which other classes 
did not possess. 1 Whatever objections may be taken to a 
method which gives an equal voice to the wisest and most 
public-spirited citizen and to the ignorant criminal just re- 
leased from gaol, no one has yet suggested any criterion by 
which the quality of voters should be tested and more weight 
allowed to the votes of the fittest. Equal suffrage as well as 
Universal Suffrage has apparently to be accepted for better 
or worse. 

Is there then no other way in which the people can ex- 
press their mind and exert their power ? Can any means be 
found of supplying that which elections fail to give? Is 
the judgment delivered by polling, i.e. the counting of heads, 
the same thing as public opinion? Polling is the only ex- 
plicit and palpable mode yet devised of expressing the peo- 
ple's will. But does a judgment so delivered necessarily con- 
vey the opinion of the thoughtful element among those who 
vote, and may not that opinion be able to exert a moral au- 
thority at times when no legal opportunity is provided for 
the delivery of a judgment at the polls ? 

What is Public Opinion? The term is commonly used 
to denote the aggregate of the views men hold regarding mat- 
ters that affect or interest the community. Thus understood, 
it is a congeries of all sorts of discrepant notions, beliefs, 
fancies, prejudices, aspirations. It is confused, incoherent, 
amorphous, varying from day to day and week to week. But 
in the midst of this diversity and confusion every question as 

1 1 do not forget, but cannot find space for an adequate discussion of, 
the other objections taken to a representative system which ignores 
minorities. Much light may be expected from the many experiments 
that are now being tried in various forms of Proportional Kepresenta- 
tion. 



/ 



154 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS part i 

it rises into importance is subjected to a process of consolida- 
tion and clarification until there emerge and take definite 
shape certain views, or sets of interconnected views, each held 
and advocated in common by bodies of citizens. It is to the 
power exerted by any such view, or set of views, when held 
by an apparent majority of citizens, that we refer when we 
talk of Public Opinion as approving or disapproving a cer- 
tain doctrine or proposal, and thereby becoming a guiding or 
ruling power. Or we may think of the Opinion of a whole 
nation as made up of different currents of sentiment, each 
embodying or supporting a view or a doctrine or a practical 
proposal. Some currents develop more strength than others, 
because they have behind them larger numbers or more in- 
tensity of conviction ; and when one is evidently the strongest, 
it begins to be called Public Opinion par excellence, being 
taken to embody the views supposed to be held by the bulk of 
the people. Difficult as it often is to determine the relative 
strength of the different streams of opinion — one cannot 
measure their strength as electric power is measured by 
volts — every one admits that when one stream is distinctly 
stronger than any other, i.e. when it would evidently prevail 
if the people were called upon to vote, it ought to be obeyed. 
Till there is a voting, its power, being open to doubt, has no 
legal claim to obedience. But impalpable though it may be, 
no sensible man disputes that power, and such governing au- 
thorities as ministries and legislatures are obliged to take 
account of it and shape their course accordingly. In this 
sense, therefore, the People are always ruling, because their 
will is recognized as supreme whenever it is known, and 
though it is formally and legally expressed only by the process 
of counting votes, it is frequently known for practical pur- 
poses without that process. 

What I am trying to convey may be illustrated from phe- 
nomena perceived by any one who sits in a deliberative as- 
sembly such as the British House of Commons. In that 
body, which is a sort of microcosm of the nation, the opinion 
of the House, as pronounced in a division and recorded in the 
division lists, is not the same as that opinion gathered from 
the private talks which members have with one another. 
Many propositions which are carried on a division would be 
rejected if the members were free to express by their votes 



chap, xv PUBLIC OPINION 155 

exactly what they think. Their judgment, formed after 
hearing all that can be said on both sides, is frequently dif- 
ferent from, and sounder than, that which they deliver by 
their votes. The members are not to blame for this. It is 
incident to their position. They are required, not only by 
the pledges they have given to their constituents, but by the 
system of party government which could not be worked if 
every one was to vote exactly as he thought, to give votes not 
consistent with their personal views. Everybody knows this, 
and a ministry often feels it so strongly that it drops a pro- 
posal which it could carry if it put full pressure on the party 
loyalty of its adherents. The case of a nation differs from 
the case of a parliament, because the voters are not bound by 
pledges or by allegiance. They have only their own con- 
sciences to obey. But the cases are in this respect similar, 
that opinion as declared by voting may differ widely from 
that which would be elicited by interrogating privately (were 
it possible to do this on a large scale) those citizens who have 
what can be called an opinion: and the latter opinion so 
elicited would be more likely to be right than the former. 

How is the drift of Public Opinion to be ascertained? 
That is the problem which most occupies and perplexes poli- 
ticians. They usually go for light to the press, but the press, 
though an indispensable, is not a safe guide, since the circu- 
lation of a journal does not necessarily measure the prev- 
alence of the views it advocates. Newspaper accounts given 
of what men are thinking may be coloured and misleading, 
for every organ tends to exaggerate the support its views com- 
mand. Neither are public meetings a sure index, for in pop- 
ulous centres almost any energetic group can fill a large hall 
with its adherents. Stray elections arising from the death 
or retirement of a legislator or (in the States of the North 
American Union) of an elected official, are much relied on, 
yet the result is often due rather to local circumstances than 
to a general movement of political feeling. There is, more- 
over, such a thing as an artificially created and factitious 
opinion. The art of propaganda has been much studied in 
our time, and has attained a development which enables its 
practitioners by skilfully and sedulously supplying false or 
one-sided statements of fact to beguile and mislead those who 
have not the means or the time to ascertain the facts for 



156 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

themselves. Against all these sources of error the observer 
must be on his guard. 

The best way in which the tendencies at work in any 
community can be discovered and estimated is by moving 
freely about among all sorts and conditions of men and not- 
ing how they are affected by the news or the arguments 
brought from day to day to their knowledge. In every neigh- 
bourhood there are unbiassed persons with good opportunities 
for observing, and plenty of skill in " sizing up " the atti- 
tude and proclivities of their fellow-citizens. Such men are 
invaluable guides. Talk is the best way of reaching the 
truth, because in talk one gets directly at the facts, whereas 
reading gives not so much the facts as what the writer be- 
lieves, or wishes to have others believe. Whoever, having 
himself a considerable experience of politics, takes the trouble 
to investigate in this way will seldom go astray. There is a 
flair which long practice and " sympathetic touch " bestow. 
The trained observer learns how to profit by small indications, 
as an old seaman discerns, sooner than the landsman, the 
signs of coming storm. 

There have doubtless been some remarkable instances in 
which English party managers anticipated success at a gen- 
eral election and encountered defeat. But these instances, 
like that of the prophets who bade Ahab go up against 
Ramoth Gilead, are explained by the propensity of party 
agents to find what they set out to seek, and to prophesy 
smooth things when it is anywise possible to do so. 

How does public opinion grow, and how can the real vol- 
ume and strength a view possesses be distinguished from 
those artificial and delusive appearances which politicians are 
obliged to present as true, each party wishing to pose before 
the public as the majority ? 

Three classes of persons have to do with the making of 
public opinion. There are the men who seriously occupy 
\ themselves with public affairs, whether professionally, as 
members of legislatures or journalists or otherwise actively 
engaged in politics, or as private persons who care enough 
for their duty as citizens to give constant attention to what 
passes in the political world. These persons are, taken all 
together, an exceedingly small percentage of the voting cit- 
izens. It is they, however, who practically make opinion. 



chap, xv PUBLIC OPINION 157 

They know the facts, they think out and marshall and set 
forth, by word or pen, the arguments meant to influence the 
public. 

The second class consists of those who, though compara- 3^ 
tively passive, take an interest in politics. They listen and 
read, giving an amount of attention proportioned to the mag- 
nitude of any particular issue placed before them, or to the 
special interest it may have for them. They form a judg- 
ment upon the facts and arguments presented to them. Their 
judgment corrects and modifies the views of the first class, 
and thus they are, though not the originators, yet largely the 
moulders of opinion, giving to a doctrine or a proposition the 
shape it has to take if it is to succeed. Most of them belong 
to a party but are not so hotly partisan as to be unable to con- 
sider fairly both sides of a case. In countries accustomed to 
constitutional government, and when not swept off their feet 
by excitement, such men have the qualities of a good jury- 
man and deliver a sensible verdict. What they think and 
feel is the opinion of the nation as a whole. It is Public 
Opinion. 

The third class includes all that large residue of the citizens 
which is indifferent to public affairs, reading little and think- 
ing less about them. So far as it has any opinion, it adopts 
that which prevails in the place where it lives, or in the social 
class or industrial milieu to which it belongs. Men of this 
type will now and then be attracted by a personality, and 
follow him irrespective of his politics, because some of his 
qualities, not always his better qualities, appeal to certain 
tastes of their own. Though they neither make opinion as 
thinkers nor help to mould it as critics, they swell its volume, 
and form, in some countries, a considerable proportion of 
those whom a party can enrol as loyal supporters, all the more 
sure to be loyal because they do not reflect, but are content to 
repeat current phrases. The proportion of this class to the 
total adult population varies in different countries, but is 
everywhere larger than is commonly supposed. It has been 
much increased in countries which have adopted universal 
suffrage. Smallest in Switzerland, it is small also in Sco1> 
land and Norway and New Zealand, and Would be small in 
the United States but for the presence of eleven millions of 
negroes and some millions of recent immigrants. 



158 GENEEAL CONSIDERATIONS past i 

Among the conditions requisite for the formation of a wise 
and tolerant public opinion the intelligence of the people and 
the amount of interest which the average citizen takes in pub- 
lic affairs are the most important. Another is the extent to 
which agreement exists upon certain fundamental political 
doctrines. In the United States everybody is attached to the 
republican form of government : everybody assumes the com- 
plete separation of Church and State and the exclusion of 
ecclesiasticism from politics. In France, on the other hand, 
the chasm between Roman Catholics and the opponents of 
Christianity is deep; and there are still many who desire 
some form of government which, whether or not monarchical 
in name, shall be monarchical in substance. In Canada and 
South Africa differences of race prevent the existence of a 
homogeneous public sentiment, for they may tend to make 
men judge a proposal not so much by its value for the com- 
munity as by its probable effect on their own section. So if 
social classes are unfriendly, suspicion is rife, and agreement 
becomes difficult even on questions, such as those of foreign 
policy, which scarcely affect domestic interests. 1 Where 
marked incompatibilities of thinking or of feeling, whatever 
their source, breed distrust, that useful process of gradual 
assimilation and half -conscious compromise by which one gen- 
eral dominant opinion is formed out of the contact and mix- 
ture of many views works imperfectly. A truly national pa- 
triotism stills domestic discords at moments of danger, and 
helps to keep some questions above party even in quiet times. 
But such a patriotism needs to be strengthened and enlarged 
in each country by a better understanding among the citizens 
of one another's characters and aims, and a better sense of 
what each class or section gains by the others' prosperity, than 
most nations possess. 
r Now let us, returning to the point whence this discussion 
started, compare that influence upon the conduct of public 
affairs which is called, somewhat loosely, the Rule of Public 
Opinion, with the direct control exerted by the citizens when 
they vote either on a question submitted (Referendum) or 

i As to the influence of Public Opinion on international policy see 
Chapter on Democracy and Foreign Policy in Part III., post. It need 
hardly be said that Public Opinion cannot, and much less can Voting, 
pass judgment on details in legislation. Its action, both in that sphere 
and in foreign policy, deals with broad principles only. 



chap, xv PUBLIC OPINION 159 

for a candidate. The action of Opinion is continuous, that I 
of Voting occasional, and in the intervals between the elec- 
tions of legislative bodies changes may take place materially 
affecting the views of the voters. In France, where the dura- 
tion of a Chamber is four years, in England where it is five, 
they cannot be assumed to be of the same mind after two 
years. At elections it is for a candidate that votes are given, 
and as his personality or his local influence may count for 
more than his principles, the choice of one man against an- 
other is an imperfect way of expressing the mind of a con- 
stituency. In countries which (like Britain and the British 
self-governing Dominions) allow a ministry to fix the date 
for a general election, a moment may be seized when the peo- 
ple are stirred by some temporary emotion which prevents a 
considered and temperate expression of their will. Such a 
" snap election " may misrepresent their more deliberate 
mind. 

The result of an election may be determined by the action 
of an insignificant knot of voters specially interested in a 
question of slight importance. Anti-vaccinationists, or a few 
dozens of government employees demanding higher wages, 
have thus turned elections in English boroughs where parties 
were of nearly equal strength. The result seemed to give a 
victory to one political party, but the real victory was that 
of the little knot and more pliable candidate, with the result 
that the rest of the electors were debarred from delivering the 
judgment of the constituency on national issues. 

Note also that in elections the spirit of party or of class, 
and the combative ardour which such a spirit inspires, cloud 
the minds of many voters, making them think of party tri- 
umph rather than either of a candidate's merits or of his 
principles. A large percentage of the votes are given with 
little reference to the main issues involved. It is the busi- 
ness of the managers to " froth up n party feeling and make 
excitement do the work of reason. 1 

In all the points just enumerated Public Opinion, when \ 
and in so far as it can be elicited, is an organ or method 
through which the People can exert their power more elastic 

1 The observations here made regarding voting at public elections or 
on questions submitted by Referendum or Initiative are equally appli- 
cable to votings in party gatherings or at the meetings of ecclesiastical 
or labour organizations. 



/ 



160 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

and less pervertible than is the method of voting. It is 
J always operative: its action changes as the facts of the case 
change and keeps pace with them. It sets the larger and 
the smaller issues in their true perspective. It reduces petty 
" fads " or selfish groups to insignificance. It relies, not on 
organization and party drill, but on the good sense and fair- 
ness of the citizens as a whole. It expresses what is more 
or less thought and felt in all the parties by their more tem- 
perate and unbiassed members. It is a counterpoise to the 
power of mere numbers. At a poll one vote is as good as 
another, the ignorant and unreflecting counting for as much 
as the well-informed and wise, but in the formation of opin- 
ion knowledge and thought tell. The clash and conflict of 
argument bring out the strength and weakness of every case, 
and that which is sound tends to prevail. Let the cynics say 
what they will, Man is not an irrational animal. Truth usu- 
ally wins in the long run, though the obsessions of self-interest 
or prejudice or ignorance may long delay its victory. The 
turbid fluid is slowly clarified as the mud sinks to the bot- 
tom, and the liquid is drawn off pure from the top of the ves- 
sel. Voting, though indispensable as a means of determin- 
ing the view of the majority, is a mechanical operation, nec- 
essarily surrounded with legal forms, while in the formation 
and expression of opinion the essential spirit of democracy 
rises above the machinery and the trammels which machinery 
imposes and finds a means of applying its force more flexible, 
more delicate, more conciliatory and persuasive than is a de- 
cision given by the counting of votes. 

Voting, I repeat, is indispensable, for it is positive, giving 
an incontrovertible result. But voting is serviceable just in 
proportion as it has been preceded and prepared by the action 
of public opinion. The discussion which forms opinion by 
securing the due expression of each view or set of views so that 
the sounder may prevail enables the citizens who wish to 
find the truth and follow it to deliver a considered vote. It is 
an educative process constantly in progress. In the intervals 
between elections it imposes some check on the vehemence of 
party spirit and the recklessness or want of scruple of party 
leaders, and restrains the disposition of party government to 
abuse its power. When a ministry or legislature feels the 
tide of opinion beginning to run against some of their pur- 



chap, xv PUBLIC OPINION 161 

poses they pause. Many a plan has been abandoned with- 
out any formal declaration of popular disapproval because 
disapproval was felt to be in the air. This is not to say that 
the current of opinion for the time being dominant is always 
right, any more than that the people voting at the polls are 
always right. The people may err, in whichever way its will 
may be expressed, but error is more probable at moments, 
such as elections, when the passion of strife is hottest. It 
may be suggested that when the citizen is called to deliver 
his vote he will be impressed by the seriousness of the occa- 
sion and have a specially strong sense of his responsibility. 
But those who know what is the atmosphere elections gen- 
erate, and how many persons vote under the influence of mis- 
representations contrived to mislead them at the last moment 
when any correction will come too late, how many pledges 
are recklessly given, and how hard it is afterwards to escape 
from the pledge, will have no implicit faith in an election 
as an expression of genuine popular will, still less of popular 
thought. 

As the excellence of public opinion — its good sense, its 
tolerance, its pervasive activity — is the real test of a na- 
tion's fitness for self-government, so the power it exerts, 
being constantly felt as the supreme arbiter irrespective of 
electoral machinery, is the best guarantee for the smooth and 
successful working of popular government, and the best safe- 
guard against revolutionary violence. 

What does a nation need to secure that excellence and to 
enable Opinion to exert its power as supreme ? Besides the 
conditions already enumerated, the things to be chiefly desired 
are: 

The presence in the nation of many vigorous minds, con- 
structive and critical, constantly occupied in the public dis- 
cussion of the current problems of statesmanship. These are 
the minds already referred to as constituting that first and 
relatively small class which makes Opinion. 

The preponderance in the rest of the nation of men of the 
second, as compared with men of the third, of the three 
classes aforesaid, i.e. persons whose sense of civic duty makes 
them give steady attention to public affairs, and who bring 
to their consideration a fair judgment and an insight into 
character which, unseduced by the demagogue, respects up- 

VOL. I m 



V 



162 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS pabt i 

Tightness and capacity in the leader who has given proof of 
these qualities. 

In countries like France, the United States, and Britain, 
men of the first class are never wanting. But a nation needs 
something more than the intellectual guidance which such 
men can give. Among them there must also be leaders of a 
firmness which will face opprobrium and defend causes for 
the moment unpopular. The chief defect of public opinion 
is its tendency in times of excitement to overbear opposition 
and silence the voices it does not wish to hear. Courage is 
the highest and perhaps the rarest quality among politicians. 
It is specially needed in democratic countries. 



PAET II 

SOME DEMOCRACIES IN THEIR 
WORKING 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE REPUBLICS OF ANTIQUITY 

Though it is the newer forms of democracy that are the 
subject of this book, some account must be given of popular 
government in the ancient world, where that government ap- 
peared in its earliest and simplest form, for though the con- 
stitutional arrangements were often complicated, the prin- 
ciples stand out sharp and clear. In the history of the Greek 
commonwealths we discover many traits of character which 
recur in the modern world. It is instructive to study in their 
free play, when mankind was making its first political experi- 
ments among economic and social conditions diverse from 
ours, those tendencies inherent in human nature which are 
the groundwork of scientific history. 

There is also another reason why the ancient republics 
should still interest the student. Democracy is a new thing 
in the modern world. More than nineteen centuries have 
passed since it died out on the coasts of the Mediterranean. 
During all those centuries down to the days of our great- 
grandfathers, those who thought or wrote about it had to go 
back to classical antiquity for example and for instruction, 
since the only descriptions of its actual working they could 
use were provided by ancient writers. Among those writers 
there were two of such outstanding power and range of mind 
that they formed the views of all who came after them till 
the eighteenth century saw a new series of experiments in 
free government begin. To Plato and Aristotle, and to the 
historians of Greece and Rome, often misunderstood and 
sometimes misrepresented, may be traced nearly all the doc- 
trines that have been propounded regarding the respective 
merits and defects of divers forms of government. Their 
writings have become a part of the subject itself. 

Only in three countries of the ancient world did men reach 
the stage of a settled and constitutional political life, and of 

165 



166 DEMOCRACIES IN WORKING pabt ii 

these three only one need occupy us here. There were the 
Phoenicians of Carthage, there were some peoples in Italy, 
and there were the Greeks, whose small self-governing city 
communities scattered themselves out from continental 
Hellas along the coasts of the great inland sea as far as Treb- 
izond and Kertch in the east, Monaco and Marseilles in the 
west. 

Moderns have been apt to say : " What light can these 
little city states give to us who frame our systems for vast 
countries? Athens and Syracuse in the height of their 
power had fewer citizens than a single English or French con- 
stituency counts to-day. The voters who at Rome chose a 
Fabius or a Julius to be Consul were sometimes fewer than 
those who fill the hall of a nominating Convention at Chi- 
cago." But the difference in scale and in other things, too, 
are not so remarkable as the similarities. As the problems 
of good government were essentially the same, so were the 
motives and the temptations. The gifts by which power is 
won and the faults by which it is lost are as discernible in the 
careers of Greek and Roman statesmen as in those which 
engage our curiosity to-day. On the small stage of an an- 
cient city republic both figures and tendencies stand out more 
boldly, the personalities are lees conventional, the action 
moves faster, and it is often more dramatic. 

Of Carthage I have not space to speak, and the data we 
possess are scanty. It was an oligarchy rather than a de- 
mocracy, in its curlier course singularly stable, for Aristotle 
tells us it never had a revolution. Neither was the Roman 
Constitution democratic, though it had a popular element 
in the assemblies which chose the magistrates and passed 
laws. It is the Greek democracies that best deserve attention. 
Before coming to their governments, let us note some of the 
points in which the conditions of their political life differed 
from those of modern times. 

That social stratum which has been in the modern world 
the poorest and least educated lay altogether below the level 
of civic rights. Slavery did in one sense make democratic 
institutions more workable, because the class on whom hard- 
ship first fell had no political power, because the menace of 
its revolt sometimes prevented the free citizens from push- 
ing their quarrels to extremity, and because every freeman, 



chap, xvi THE REPUBLICS OF ANTIQUITY 167 

having as large or an even larger class below him than he 
had above him, acquired a certain sense of independence and 
personal dignity. Though servitude was less harsh among 
the Greeks than at Kome, it everywhere disposed men to 
cruelty and a disregard of human life. Unscrupulous ad- 
venturers could recruit among the slaves a force for revolu- 
tionary purposes, or might degrade citizenship by the ad- 
mission of an ignorant and dangerous element. 

The small size of a Greek republic, the territory of which 
seldom extended beyond a few dozens of square miles round 
the city, and the number of free citizens, usually less than 
ten and seldom exceeding thirty thousand, made it easy to 
bring within the hearing of one voice a majority of all who 
were entitled to vote in the popular Assembly, and enabled 
everybody to form his opinions on the personal qualities 
of those who aspired to leadership or to office. 1 But it in- 
creased the power of personal attraction, intensified hatreds 
and antagonisms, furnished opportunities for conspiracies 
or secret combinations formed by a few families or a group 
of ambitious politicians. 2 

Representative government w r as unknown, superfluous 
where the whole body of citizens could meet in one spot 
to discuss public affairs. It does not seem to have entered 
the thoughts of any among the philosophers or constitu- 
tion framers. 3 This deprived the ruling power in a State 
of such benefits as may be expected from the delibera- 
tions of a parliament whose members their fellow-citizens 
have chosen as best fitted by their abilities and character 
to give counsel, but on the other hand it raised the capacity, 
as well as the familiarity with public business, of the average 
citizen, raised it indeed to a higher point than it has ever 
attained elsewhere, except perhaps in Switzerland. 

i Aristotle in his Politics, where the best kind of constitution for a 
republic is fully discussed, contemplates a city which is not too large 
for one man's voice to be heard by the whole assembly (Pol. Bk. vii. 
ch. 4). 

2 A striking picture of the fierce hatreds which internal strife aroused 
in these city republics is given by Thucydides in the chapters of Book 
III., Chapters 70-85 of his History, which describe the seditions at 
Corcyra. 

3 The nearest approach to representation made in the ancient world 
seems to have been in the assembly of delegates from the chief cities 
of the Roman province of Asia under the Roman Empire; but it met 
for religious or ceremonial not for political purposes. 



168 DEMOCRACIES IN WORKING pabt n 

The citizens of these republics were originally, and most 
of them continued to be, cultivators of the city's territory, 
and many of their internal troubles arose over the distribu- 
tion and enjoyment of land. Some, like Marseilles and 
Byzantium, were commercial: a few, like Miletus, derived 
wealth from the making or dyeing of woollen stuffs. But 
they were, taken all in all, less industrial in the character 
of their population than the cities of mediaeval Italy and 
Germany; and industries (apart from mines) were seldom 
worked by large-scale producers employing many hands. 
The organization of the citizens into orders or sections was 
accordingly not by trades or guilds, as in most parts of 
modern Europe, but either by tribes, based on real or sup- 
posed kinship, or else locally connected in respect of the dis- 
trict where they dwelt. Religion played a great part. As 
the city had its common gods whom it took for its protectors, 
and as every family worshipped the ghosts of its ancestors, 
so also tribes, and often local divisions also, had local or 
peculiar deities or semi-divine heroes whom it honoured at 
local shrines. 1 

The citizens were organized on a military as well as a 
civil basis, for war service was obligatory. The cavalry, the 
heavy-armed infantry, and the light troops often constituted 
different classes for political purposes, the two former en- 
joying a privileged political position, and furnishing their 
own equipments according to their wealth. An interesting 
parallel may be found in the arrangements of the two Dutch 
Republics of South Africa, where the military officers (such 
as field cornets) also discharged political functions. 

That which seems the most conspicuous contrast between 
these communities and modern European States, viz. the 
absence of newspapers and of the use of the printing-press 
for political purposes, did not make quite so much difference 
as might be supposed, for in small communities news spreads 
fast, and the inaccuracy to which it is exposed in spreading 
was hardly greater than the divergence between " happen- 
ings " and the newspaper reports of them observable in some 
modern countries, where nevertheless the average reader 

i A brilliant, if possibly exaggerated, description and estimate of the 
influence of religion on civic organization and politics will be found in 
the well-known book of Fustel de Coulanges, La Cit6 Antique. 



chap, xvi THE KEPUBLICS OF ANTIQUITY 169 

continues to fancy that a statement is true because he has 
seen it in print. The Greeks, enjoying their open-air and 
leisurely life, spent much of their time in talking, as do 
their descendants even unto this day. News was never 
wanting. 

Abstract principles affected politics less than they have 
done in most modern democracies. Those who owned slaves 
could not very well have talked of the Rights of Man, for 
though the Americans of the South did so talk before the 
Civil War, reading the Declaration of Independence publicly 
on every Fourth of July, their difficulty was reduced by the 
fact that the bondmen were of a different colour, whereas 
among the ancients the slave might well be of as light a tint 
as his master, and possibly superior in natural intelligence. 1 
The one abstract principle which did lead to strife and in- 
duce revolutions was the passion for political equality. Free 
citizens of a gifted race, prone to vanity, and valuing them- 
selves all the more because they saw slaves beneath them, 
would not, when society had passed from its earlier stages 
into conditions comparatively orderly and peaceful, submit 
to the rule of a few persons who, while richer or better born, 
were neither wiser nor morally better than themselves, and 
dwelt as their neighbours in the same city. Political equal- 
ity seemed to be prescribed by justice, for though Aristotle 
is at great pains to explain that justice must be measured 
with reference to the difference in the capacities of the in- 
dividual, and in the value of what service each citizen can 
render, so that Proportionate Justice will assign larger func- 
tions, not indeed to the Rich, but to the Wise and Good, this 
was a doctrine then as now unwelcome to the average man. 
Moreover, Greek oligarchs always abused their power, so 
there were sure to be practical as well as theoretic grounds 
for attacking them. 

In all or nearly all the Greek states the first form of gov- 
ernment was a monarchy or chieftainship, but, as we learn 
from the Homeric poems, it was a monarchy tempered by 
public opinion, which found expression in the public assem- 
bly (of the city or tribe) convoked by a chieftain and in prac- 

1 The Athenian prisoners enslaved after their defeat at Syracuse im- 
proved their lot by reciting passages from Euripides to their owners, 
who had heard of the poet's fame, hut had never seen his dramas acted. 



170 DEMOCRACIES IN WORKING part ii 

tice guided by the leading men, but in which any freeman 
might speak his mind. 1 

After a time kingship either died out, being replaced by 
elected magistracies, or was greatly reduced in authority, 
though sometimes (for religious reasons) continued in name. 
Power passed, in most cities, to the heads of the chief fam- 
ilies, who were also the rich and the lenders of money. Their 
rule, sometimes respecting forms prescribed by old custom, 
sometimes based on force only, became more or less odious 
according as it was more or less harsh, but everywhere de- 
mands arose for a definition by law of the powers of magis- 
trates and for the admission of the bulk of the citizens to the 
public offices and the councils. This was the beginning of 
democracy. In many cities the transition took place through 
the stage of a so-called Timocracy, in which only the richer 
sort held the offices and enjoyed a greater voting power than 
the rest of the citizens. Without attempting to trace in de- 
tail the process of evolution, which in Athens lasted for more 
than a century, it will suffice to describe the features of a 
normal full-blown democracy such as was that of Athens from 
the reforms of Cleisthenes (508 b.c.) till the days of Demos- 
thenes, when the combined forces of Athens and Thebes were 
overthrown by the Macedonian Philip (338 b.c.) on the fatal 
field of Chaeroneia. 

All these democratic republics had what we should call a 
Constitution. But this was not a Rigid Constitution (such 
as that of the United States or Switzerland), but merely a 
mass of laws, which could be altered by the people when and 
as they pleased. Constitutional law was constantly altered, 
not only, as was natural, during the process of evolution from 
an oligarchy to democracy, sometimes with intervals of tyr- 
anny, but also when the occurrence of a sedition had made 
new guarantees for liberty necessary. Athens had lived 
under eleven constitutions from the time of Draco (624 
b.c.) to the settlement of 404 b.c. Aristotle collected and 
described in a treatise an immense number of constitutions, 
only one of which, that of Athens, is known to us in its 
minuter details. 

i As to this institution of the Assembly of all freemen, which appears 
in Switzerland as the Landesgemeinde, see Chapter XII p. 146, ante. 



chap, xvi THE EEPUBLICS OF ANTIQUITY 171 

The laws of these States covered the whole of civic life, 
every little city commonwealth being for political purposes 
an independent nation, making war and peace, maintaining 
its own army and navy, frequently at war with its neighbour 
cities. None (except possibly Athens) had a population of 
more than thirty or forty thousand free citizens, and few 
more than five thousand. Imagine such towns as Dover, 
Canterbury, and Maidstone in England, or such cities of the 
second or third rank as Salem, Concord, and Pittsfield, in 
Massachusetts, each one standing alone in a world full of 
other equally independent communities, if you wish to form 
an idea of what ancient republics were. In England all 
municipalities have practically the same form of municipal 
government. In the United States there is more, yet not 
very great, variety. In the Hellenic cities the variety was 
infinite, and the changes in the same city were frequent. 
There was seldom any distinction between what we should 
call National government and Local government, because the 
whole republic was usually smaller than most of our local 
administrative divisions in England or America. All of- 
fices were in fact national as well as municipal. 

Confining ourselves to the democracies, let us note their 
characteristics. The salient feature was the vesting of su- 
preme power for all purposes in the whole body of the citi- 
zens. That body was at once a Parliament and a Govern- 
ment, an Executive, Legislature, and Judiciary in one. It 
did much executive work, because it settled many important 
current questions by its vote. Not only did it choose the 
generals and other magistrates, it also instructed the gen- 
erals, listened to envoys from other States, declared war, 
concluded peace, ratified treaties, ordered public ceremonials, 
civil or religious, received public accounts. It was the Leg- 
islature, passing Laws intended to be permanent, and De- 
crees prescribing the main issues of State policy from one 
meeting to another, and imposing taxes or burdens either 
generally or on some particular class of rich men. It, or a 
part of it, formed also the Judiciary, for the citizens acting 
as one body or divided into sections which may be described 
as gigantic juries, heard and determined nearly all cases, 
both civil and criminal, while the Assembly as a whole could, 



172 DEMOCRACIES IN WORKING pabt n 

and sometimes did, even if irregularly, pass without any trial 
sentences of death or fine or exile upon those officials whose 
action had displeased it. 

How did this system work in each of the three branches 
of government? I take Athens as the best example, for we 
know more about it than about any other republic, but, as al- 
ready observed, there was no one general form of republican 
government. 

As respects executive business, there were magistrates, civil 
and military, the former chosen almost wholly by lot, the 
latter by the vote of Assembly, for even these ardent equali- 
tarians felt that skill and experience are essential in war. 
Whereas in other offices no man could serve more than once — 
even in the Council only twice — generals were often re- 
elected, Pericles fifteen times, Phocion forty-five. Terms of 
office were short, none exceeding a year. The chief civil of- 
ficials, the nine archons, were chosen by lot for a year, but 
the post carried little distinction and gave little scope for 
ambition. Par more important were the generals, elected 
yearly, ten together, each to be a sort of check on his col- 
leagues. Sometimes an important command was given to 
one specially, but more frequently they exercised their func- 
tions jointly. They, or some of them, not only led in the 
field, but brought questions of foreign policy before the 
Assembly, and, since charged with military preparations, 
had war finance also to deal with. Whoever showed high 
capacity and won confidence became a leading man in the 
city. 

For legislative purposes there was a Council which was 
meant to prepare work for, and to some extent guide, the 
Assembly. 1 It consisted of five hundred members, fifty be- 
ing taken by lot from each of the ten tribes. No one under 

i See Polity of the Athenians (now generally accepted as a work of 
Aristotle), where (chapters 43-46) the functions of the Council and the 
duties of these and other official persons are described. This treatise, 
discovered in an Egyptian papyrus, and published by Sir F. Kenyon 
in 1891, is the only part of Aristotle's treatise (or treatises) on the 
Greek constitutions which has been preserved to us. Parts of it are 
wanting, or undecipherable, in the MS. The outline I have given in 
the text describes the system generally. To set forth the variations 
between the earlier and the later arrangements would involve a much 
fuller treatment. 

2 Eighteen was the age which qualified a man to sit in the Assembly. 



chap, xvi THE KEPUBLICS OF ANTIQUITY 173 

the age of thirty 2 was eligible, no one could serve in it more 
than twice. Each tribal group of fifty was placed in charge 
for the term of thirty-five days (one-tenth of a year), called 
a Prytany, and was responsible for the arrangement of the 
business that had to come before the Assembly during its 
term. This Council appointed, again by lot, a president 
(e7T«rTciT^5) whose office lasted for twenty-four hours only, 
and who could not be reappointed. This president took, 
again by lot, nine other persons (TrpoeSpot) out of the nine 
other tribes who were not then presiding, and from these 
nine took, once more by lot, one to be chairman. These 
nine then received the programme (Trpoypan/jLa) of busi- 
ness to be dealt with by the Assembly, and provided for the 
orderly conduct of business in that body, proposing the ques- 
tions to be dealt with (including the elections of the magis- 
trates chosen by vote), taking the votes, supervising the pro- 
ceedings generally, but leaving to the Assembly all matters 
of policy. These ingenious arrangements were devised not 
only to respect the principle of equality, but also to prevent 
any one tribe from having things too much its own way, even 
during its thirty-five-day term. Yet the function of arrang- 
ing and directing the course of business, though it gave im- 
portance to the annual appointment of the Council, carried 
less power than that which the Speaker enjoyed till recently 
in the American Congress, or that which the " Steering Com- 
mittee " now exerts there ; and much less than the Cabinet 
exerts in the British House of Commons. The Council no- 
wise interfered with the freedom of the Assembly to discuss 
and (if it pleased) to decide a question raised by any ordi- 
nary private citizen. 

The power of the Assembly was complete and absolute. 
As Aristotle remarks, it did what it pleased. 1 Its action 
embraced every department of State work, and was uncon- 
trolled. There was no King, no President of the Republic, 
to interpose his veto, no Second Chamber to amend or reject 
a bill, no constitutional limitations fettering the Assembly's 
action, save one (not always respected) which is peculiar 
enough to be worth describing. 

Holding the doctrine that political sovereignty, complete 
and final, rested not with the citizens but with the laws of 
i Polity of the Athenians, ch. 41, 



174: DEMOCRACIES IN WORKING paht ii 

the city, embodying the settled mind and will of the people, 
the Greeks drew a distinction between Laws (No'/aoi), con- 
taining general rules of permanent operation and Decrees 
(if/r)cf)L(TixaTa) j 1 passed for a particular occasion or pur- 
pose. Now at Athens the Laws were liable to be amended 
once at least in every year on the proposal either of any pri- 
vate citizen or of a body officially charged with the duty of 
revision (Thesmothetai). When on the proposal either of 
the Thesmothetai or of a citizen, a resolution to amend was 
accepted by the Assembly, a body of citizens called Nomothe- 
tai, and constituting a Legislative Commission, was appointed 
by lot to preside over the process of amendment. The Com- 
mission discussed and voted on the amendments submitted, 
thus giving to the Laws their revised form, which lasted till 
another process of amendment was put through. This may 
be called Constitutional Legislation in the strict sense of 
the term. It was passed at a special time and by a sort of 
special Committee, though a huge one, sometimes of as many 
as one thousand citizens, taken by lot. Now in order to 
protect the Laws from being infringed by the Assembly, that 
is to say, to protect the citizens against their own hasty or 
ignorant action, a check was contrived. Whoever brought 
forward and carried in the Assembly any Decree or proposi- 
tion which transgressed any Law in form or in substance, 
might be prosecuted by any citizen for his wrongful act in 
misleading the Assembly into an illegality. If the prosecu- 
tion succeeded, the culprit was fined, or possibly even put 
to death, and the decree of the Assembly (if still operative) 
was annulled ; but if a year had elapsed from the date of the 
illegality, no penalty was inflicted. This was called the In- 
dictment for Illegality (ypa<j>r) irapavofiwy) , and served to 
deter the orators who guided the Assembly from reckless pro- 
posals infringing the formal safeguards ; though often enough 
the threat was insufficient, and resolutions were passed which 
had worked their mischief before their illegality had been es- 
tablished. The same kind of indictment was employed where 
some one had proposed to amend a Law without following the 
formalities prescribed for that purpose. In this way the 

i A somewhat similar distinction is drawn in France and Switzerland 
between Lois and Arrets (Beschliisse) , though the Greek v6fios corre- 
sponds in a sense to a French lot constitutionelle. 



chap, xvi THE KEPTJBLICS OF ANTIQUITY 175 

Constitution (as we should say), was deemed to be guarded, 
and that by a sort of judicial proceeding, the people being too 
jealous of their power to permit any presiding official to ar- 
rest their action as illegal, or to entrust to any authority but 
their own (acting in a judicial capacity) the duty of after- 
wards declaring it to have been illegal. 

Though we know far less than we should like to know of 
the way debates were conducted in the Assembly, a few things 
stand out clearly. 1 There were no regularly organized 
parties. Any citizen could speak, but much of the debating 
fell to the practised orators whom the people knew and were 
apt to follow. The rule that every proposition ought to come 
through the Council was not strictly observed, and as those 
proposals which were brought from the Council could also be 
added to or varied, the Assembly's hands were practically 
free. There was little disorder, though sometimes much ex- 
citement, for the audience, which might number more thou- 
sands than any hall in London or Washington could well ac- 
commodate, and met in the open air (at Athens usually in 
the early morning), was so well accustomed to the exercise 
of its functions that we must think of it not as a mob or 
a mass meeting but rather as a House of Commons or Con- 
gress raised to seven or ten times the number of those legis- 
latures. Four regular meetings were held in each Prytany 
period of thirty-five days, notice being usually given five days 
beforehand; and special meetings could be summoned in an 
emergency, sometimes by a trumpet-call. For some few pur- 
poses a quorum of 6000 was prescribed. Every one who at- 
tended received a sort of ticket or token, on presenting which 
at the proper office he was (in later days) paid his small at- 
tendance fee, payment having been introduced in the fourth 
century, long after the time of Pericles. Order was kept by 
the Scythian archers, public slaves or servants acting under 
the directions of the presidents. 2 We hear of no rules of 
closure, but large popular assemblies have speedier and more 
drastic means of curtailing debate. Attendance was chiefly 
given by those who dwelt in the city, or in the port of Piraeus, 

i For a vivacious description of what the Assembly may have been 
like, see the bright and suggestive book of Mr. A. E. Zimmern, The 
Greek Commonwealth, pp. 163-7. 

2 There was also a corps of 1600 free citizen archers maintained at 
Athens and paid as a city guard. 



176 DEMOCRACIES IN WORKING pabt ii 

and seldom exceeded 5000 out of a possible total of 30,000 
to 35,000 adult male citizens. Voting was usually by the 
holding up of hands, but sometimes by pebbles dropped into 
urns for the Ayes and the Noes. 

Besides passing decrees and carrying on the executive work 
already described, the Assembly acted also as a Court of Jus- 
tice to hear an impeachment (elcrayyeXia) of persons charged 
with political offences, and could inflict on those whom it 
condemned fines, or exile, or death, all this without the 
formalities of a judicial proceeding. 1 

There were, however, many details of current business 
which it could not deal with. These were left to the Council, 
formed as already described. It was a sort of Committee of 
the Assembly, as the British Cabinet is a sort of Committee 
of Parliament. But it was chosen by lot, and thus repre- 
sented not the ripest wisdom and experience of the Assembly, 
but its average intelligence, consisting not of leaders, but of 
rank and file, with no preference for men of ability and in- 
fluence. It sat in public, and was approachable by every 
citizen. Besides preparing business to be brought before 
the Assembly, it exerted a general supervision over the state 
administration as a whole, and particularly over finance, do- 
ing this mainly by committees or commissions appointed from 
itself for special purposes. Meeting daily, the Council was 
the constantly working organ of state life, by which the 
other numerous administrative Boards were kept in touch 
with one another, so that nothing should be omitted through 
the default of any one of them. Responsibility for neglect 
or misfeasance was strictly enforced, even when the error was 
one of judgment only, not of evil purpose. The Athenians 
thought they made up for their laxity in some respects by 
their stringency in others. The Assembly might break its 
own rules, but that made it none the less harsh towards oth- 
ers who did the like. Greek governments were often unjust 
and sometimes cruel. 

Oddest of all, to modern eyes, of the features of Athenian 
democracy was the machinery provided for judicial business, 

i The Assembly sat judicially also where another kind of charge was 
brought by what was called a irpo(3o\ri, condemnation in which did not 
carry therewith a penalty, but might be followed by a prosecution in 
the courts. 



THE KEPUBLICS OF ANTIQUITY 177 

and the use made of it for political purposes. The citizens 
were organized for judicial work in a body called the Heliaea, 
which consisted of all who offered themselves to take the 
judicial oath. Its normal number is given as 6000 ; that be- 
ing the number chosen annually for the purposes by the 
Demes (&}/«h) ? local circumscriptions which exercised a 
sort of self-government in local affairs. Probably no more 
than 6000 could be found willing to serve, at least in the 
Demes with an agricultural population living some way from 
the city. Though the Heliaea might sit as a whole, it usually 
acted by sections, of which there were ten. They were called 
Dikasteries, and their members Dikasts, names which I use 
because the words " juries " and " jurors " would inevitably 
convey to modern readers the notion of small bodies, whereas 
these sections were very large. 1 The normal number seems 
to have been 500, but it was often smaller, perhaps 250 or 
200. The lot determined who should sit in each section. To 
some one of the Dikasteries every case, civil or criminal, was 
referred. Plaintiff and defendant, accuser and accused, 
pleaded their cases in person, though they often read aloud 
the speeches which had been prepared for them by profes- 
sional advocates. Sometimes a party to a cause was allowed 
to have the aid of a friend who would follow him and support 
his cause. The Dikasts were judges of every issue, for the 
presiding magistrate had no right either to state the law or 
to sum up on the facts. All was left to the crowd of Dikasts 
who, being a crowd, were impressionable, quickly excited by 
appeals to their feelings or prejudices, easily beguiled by 
plausible misrepresentations. 2 In such conditions, the law 
came off ill, and the pleader's skill was chiefly directed to 
handling, or mishandling, the facts. From the vote of the 
majority of the Dikastery there was no appeal. It not only 
delivered the verdict but fixed the penalty. 

i The great size of the courts was due not only to the idea that the 
people ought to rule, but probably also to the fear that smaller tribunals 
would be bribed. The judicia at Rome, despite their large numbers, 
often were. 

2 The speeches of the Athenian orators which have come down to us 
furnish abundant illustrations. These speeches were of course hardly 
ever, if ever, reported as delivered, but were written out before or after- 
wards, and possibly used as political pamphlets, as were some of the 
famous orations of Cicero, e. g. the speech for Milo and the Second 
Philippic {divma Philippica) , neither of which was actually delivered. 
VOL. I N 



178 DEMOCRACIES IN WOKEING past ii 

Seriously as these defects injured the course of justice in 
private suits, they were even more pernicious in their po- 
litical results. There were not, as in modern countries, 
regular public prosecutors. Any citizen could indict another 
for an alleged offence against the State, and that not merely 
when an official was charged with negligence or other breach 
of duty, or corruption, or when any person was arraigned for 
a treasonable plot, or for having led the Assembly into a 
breach of the Laws or given it bad advice which it had fol- 
lowed. To prosecute became an obvious means not only of 
injuring a political opponent but of winning distinction for 
the accuser, and of levying blackmail by the threat of legal 
proceedings. A class of informers called Sycophants sprang 
up who made prosecutions their trade, and deterred many 
good citizens from coming forward to serve the public. Thus 
the battles of politics were fought out in the law courts al- 
most as often as in the Assembly, the former being scarcely 
more impartial or circumspect than was the latter. Not only 
politicians, but almost every wealthy citizen who was worth 
worrying or harrying lived in perpetual disquiet. 1 He 
might be at any moment accused of some offence which could 
not be disproved without labour and anxiety, so it was prob- 
ably cheaper to buy off the Sycophant than to fight him be- 
fore the Dikastery. The system was often denounced, but 
it stood, partly because it was deemed to guarantee the safety 
of the State both against the predominance of any one man 
and against secret conspiracies, but also because the Dikasts 
found occupation and drew emolument from this incessant 
political as well as private litigation. Their pay, three obols 
a day, was scanty, but living was cheap, and the work light, 
suited to elderly men who liked to sun themselves in the city 
listening to well-turned rhetoric. A citizen drawing pay on 
most days for his judicial duties, and for his presence in the 
Assembly at least once a fortnight, had a chance of further 
pay for some other among the numerous lot-awarded offices, 
could attend some theatrical performance for which the means 
of paying were provided him, and received a share, small as 
it might be, from the silver mines or other source of public 

i The rich were also heavily taxed, but in spite of everything there 
were always rich men. It is wonderful how much the richer class can 
bear and still be rich. We shall find this in Australia also. 



chap, xvi THE KEPUBLICS OF ANTIQUITY 179 

revenue. The fear of losing these " stakes in the country " 
was sufficient — so we are told — to make the orators use the 
argument that if heavy fines were not imposed on rich de- 
fendants so as to replenish the coffers of the State, there 
would not be enough left to pay the jury fees and Assembly 
fees of the citizens. 

Who worked this machinery of government, legislative and 
administrative and judicial ? Not a Cabinet, for there was 
none. Not party organizations, for there were no organized 
parties, but only tendencies which disposed this or that section 
of the voters to adhere generally to one type of view or fol- 
low some particular politician who had gained popularity. 
One can hardly talk even of political leaders, for though there 
were always prominent men who figured in debate, these 
could not count on any assured following among the voters. 
So far as there was any one centre of authority, it existed in 
the Assembly, a crowd of four, five, or six thousand persons, 
not always the same men, for the country dwellers came ir- 
regularly, and the more ignorant and irresponsible seaport 
folk and small tradespeople were apt to give more frequent 
attendance than did the richer class, who had their private 
affairs to look after. This grew in course of time as the 
number of poor citizens increased ; and complaints were made 
that the quality of the Assembly was declining, though it did 
not sink so low as did that of the Comitia in the last century 
of the Republic at Rome. The Assembly never, however, 
became a mob, for it knew how to listen, and those who ad- 
dressed it were commonly either orators with whom it was 
familiar, or some few generals whose services or character 
had won its confidence. Usually it was led by the orators, 
practised rhetoricians, most of whom held no office, and who 
devoted themselves to politics, some from ambition, some 
from public spirit, some in the hope of turning their in- 
fluence to personal gain. Nowhere perhaps has the power 
of eloquence been so great as it was in these republics, where 
the ruling Assembly was full of bright and alert minds, 
equally susceptible to ingenious arguments and to emotional 
appeals, with every passion intensified by the contagion of 
numbers. It was the orators that practically held sway, and 
that an irresponsible sway, for as they had not the measures 
like the executive of a modern country, to carry out, they 



180 DEMOCRACIES IN WOKKING past ii 

recommended, any blame for the failure of those measures 
would fall on others. They were Demagogues in the original 
sense of the word, for they " led the people." Among the 
leaders there were great men like Themistocles and Pericles 
and Demosthenes, honest men like Aristides and Nicias and 
Phocion, who commanded respect by their talents or charac- 
ter. But many, especially in later days, were demagogues in 
the sense the word came to acquire, unscrupulous politicians, 
flattering and cajoling the people for their own selfish ends. 
Having power, they were often tempted by those who wished 
to get some benefit from the people. When tempted, they 
mostly fell. To take a bribe was hardly deemed an offence, 
unless it was given as payment for treason to the city's 
interests. 

To a modern eye the strangest part of all this strange 
frame of government was the plan of leaving to chance the 
selection of nearly all officials except those generals for whom 
military skill was indispensable. Yet the use made of the 
Lot, as well as the other arrangements described, was deemed 
to be imposed by the supreme need of averting oligarchy, 
and still worse, Tyranny, the disease always threatening 
Greek republics, as it destroyed sixteen centuries later the re- 
publics of mediaeval Italy. 1 The vesting of public func- 
tions in large Boards instead of in individual officials was 
meant to make each member a check upon his colleagues. 
The short terms of office tended to prevent corrupt men from 
forming secret schemes for robbing the public funds. Thus 
power was brief as well as limited. The throwing open to 
every citizen of the right to prosecute officials made the way 
of transgressors hard, for it turned every ambitious rival into 
a detective. The Lot itself not only gave each man, however 
obscure, his chance of office, making him feel his equality 
with the richest, but threw difficulties in the way of treason- 
able plots, for those who had to exercise political power to- 
gether were not, as in modern popular governments, party 
associates or social intimates, with common aims in view. 

i See as to the use of the Lot the interesting little book of Mr. J. W. 
Headlam, Election by Lot at Athens, with which compare the concise 
Handbook of Greek Constitutional History of A. H. J. Greenidge, a 
scholar too soon lost to learning. The Lot is to Aristotle a character- 
istically democratic institution. It was used in the Italian republics, 
notably in Florence in the fifteenth century. 



chap, xvi THE EEPUBLICS OF ANTIQUITY 181 

By all these devices, and also by Ostracism, the power of vot- 
ing into exile, without any specific charge, a politician whom 
it was desired to keep away from the city, the Athenians 
sought to prevent any man from rising markedly above others 
in influence or power, and if this could not be quite pre- 
vented, to reduce his opportunities for doing mischief. And, 
on the whole, the devices succeeded. It was defeats in war 
that brought the first democracy to an end. After its re- 
establishment in 403 b.c. Athens never regained the com- 
manding position she had held in the days of Pericles as the 
head of a confederacy of subject allies. But though her 
government was thereafter perhaps less efficient and cer- 
tainly more offensive to the rich, its democratic character 
was not seriously endangered during the eighty years that 
followed down to the melancholy day when Macedonian 
troops were placed in the port-fortress of Munychia to over- 
awe the people. 

Athens lacked, and so did most of her sister republics, some 
features found in modern free governments. There was no 
proper judicial establishment, no regular civil service, no 
permanent military establishment (despite the frequent 
wars), no organized political parties, little interest in or im- 
portance attached to elections to office, and an imperfect con- 
stitutional check on the action of the ruling legislature. Ex- 
ecutive power was comminuted and distributed among a large 
number of Boards, each consisting of many persons and re- 
stricted to a few special functions. Such a government 
could hardly have been worked save by a wonderfully keen 
and active-minded people, whose courage and resourcefulness 
largely compensated for their instability and deficient re- 
spect for authority. They held their ground well against 
their neighbour and often hostile republics, whose weak- 
nesses were like their own. Had no other foes appeared, the 
Republics of Hellas might have provided the world with still 
more to admire, and still more to take warning from. What 
would the democracy of Athens have become had its quality 
been tested by another two centuries of life? Would in- 
genuity and patriotism have discovered remedies for the evils 
which Aristotle noted % Or would the intensification of that 
antagonism of Rich and Poor which was already visible in 
the later days of Plato have led to revolution and the estab- 



182 DEMOCRACIES IN WORKING paht ii 

lishment of an oligarchy or even of a tyranny. Unhappily 
the drama was never played out. After the first three acts, 
in the first of which Solon, in the second Pericles, and in the 
third Phocion and Demosthenes played the leading parts, the 
curtain suddenly fell. The military monarchy of Macedonia, 
reared by the craft of Philip, and thereafter wielded by the 
resistless force of Alexander, cut short the free life of Athens. 
Democracy virtually ended when (in 323 b.c.) Antipater 
reduced the number of citizens and planted a garrison to 
control them. Free governments, more or less democratic, 
remained in some other cities, notably in those of the Achaean 
League, till they succumbed to Rome. But at Athens, 
though she continued to be the most famous seat of instruc- 
tion in philosophy till Justinian closed her schools in a.d. 
529, the day of great statesmen, great poets, and great phi- 
losophers was gone for ever. 

The defects of the Greek Republics have been dwelt upon 
by a host of writers, who found material for their strictures 
in the accounts given by the two finest philosophic minds of 
the ancient world, both of whom lived in Athens and de- 
scribed its democracy in treatises which were the earliest 
and remain among the most precious contributions ever made 
to political thought. The judgments of Plato are more severe 
than those of his great disciple, because he tries what he saw 
by the standard of that Ideal Polity which he imagines to be 
stored up somewhere in the heavens, never to become actual 
on earth till the day comes when philosophers are kings or 
kings are philosophers, — a day of which not even the dawn 
is yet discernible. Aristotle applies a standard drawn .from 
the facts of his own time, and he finds Athens rather above 
than below the average of excellence which its republics pre- 
sented. The kind of government he sketches as being the 
best attainable under existing Greek conditions is founded on 
his observations of the institutions which were working well 
in various cities, including Carthage (he had unfortunately 
no data from Rome), and shows that he wished to blend some 
features of an aristocratic with others of a democratic type. 1 

i He wished to have magistrates chosen from persons possessing a 
property qualification, not so high as to exclude the majority of the 
citizens, to let offices be unpaid, to strengthen the power of the middle 
class by taking steps to reduce the inequality of fortunes, and to have 
the legal tribunals filled by competent citizens. He prefers elections by 



chap, xvi THE EEPUBLICS OF ANTIQUITY 183 

Both philosophers should of course be compared with the 
contemporary references to the working of democracy to be 
found in Thucydides and Xenophon and the Attic orators, 
nor should the plays of Aristophanes, albeit caricatures, be 
omitted. From all these sources we get a vivid picture of 
public life in the most keen-witted, versatile, and inventive 
community the world has ever seen, men whose achievements 
in art and literature are models for all time. The Athenians 
had no doubt the defects of their qualities. But what 
qualities ! 

A farewell glance at the salient features of their public life 
shows us a whole people always busy, or supposed to be busy, 
directing and administering their State in the Assembly, in 
the Council and its Committees, in the law Courts, in the 
various other bodies, Thesmothetai, Nomothetai, and the 
numerous smaller Boards. Most citizens had at some time 
or other filled some office, and everybody was paid, even for 
attending the Assembly. But the Athenians were also fond 
of talking and fond of amusement. The ideal of a steady 
and strenuous co-operation of all citizens in the daily duties 
of government was far from being attained in practice. State 
work was compatible with laziness. 1 The average man loved 
oratory and was readily moved by it, was clever enough to 
enjoy its brilliance and not quite wary enough to discount 
its artifices. Its sway was tempered only by bribery and by 
the fear of a prosecution for having misled the people. 

Gathered in their Assembly the citizens were hasty and 
variable, easily swept off their feet by passion, unable to pur- 
sue a fixed foreign policy, unless they found a Pericles or a 
Phocion whom they had grown to trust as both sagacious and 
incorruptible. Impatient of restraints, even such restraints 
as they had by law imposed upon themselves, they ruled as a 
despot rules, exemplifying the maxim that no one is good 
enough to be trusted with absolute power. Demos, says 
Aristotle, is the sole sovereign, Demos becomes a Tyrant. 

the citizens in tribes rather than by the whole people, and so may be 
cited as favouring scrutin d'wrrondissement as against scrutin de liste 
" ward elections " as opposed to the " general ticket " of American cities 
(see chapters on France and on the U.S.A., post). 

1 "Apyoi /ecu AdXcu . . . aveifxivf) teal fiaXaKrj -rroXtTeia, says Aristotle, in 
whose time the sense of civic duty was probably lower than it had 
been in the days of Pericles. 



184 DEMOCRACIES IN WORKING paet ii 

The spirit of independence, the love of equality, and the 
dread of an ambitious usurper made them trust their magis- 
trates with so little power that in many branches of adminis- 
tration there was no permanent control, no fixed policy, no 
means of throwing responsibility on any one for the neglect 
to take action when needed or to provide precautions against 
impending danger. But when roused they could put forth 
efforts worthy of heroes, manning their fleets with splendid 
celerity and throwing their hearts into combat. 

In their relations with other States they showed that de- 
ficient respect for the rights of others, and for liberty as a 
principle, which belonged to every Hellenic community. 
There was little chivalry or love of justice where strangers 
were concerned, and no love of peace. Among the Greeks, 
patriotism sometimes reached its highest, and sometimes fell 
to its lowest level. There were men who willingly died for 
their city. There were others, sometimes of the most bril- 
liant gifts, who, like Themistocles and Alcibiades, did not 
hesitate, when exiled, to do their utmost to injure it. The 
power of money and the greed for money appears from the 
prevalence of bribery and the frequent embezzlement of the 
public funds. These Republics did not live by Virtue. 
Rather might one say that they lived by disbelief in it. 

If the faults enumerated constitute a grave indictment of 
Greek democracy, let no judgment be passed till Greek oli- 
garchy also has been examined. It had few of the merits 
and all the faults of democracy, except perhaps in the sphere 
of foreign relations, for in these policy is usually more con- 
sistent and foreseeing when directed by the Few rather .than 
the Many. In the oligarchic cities there was less security 
for property and for personal liberty, and far less chance of 
justice, for the rulers took without scruple what they 
wanted, and everything went by favour. Oligarchs were as 
corrupt and more rapacious than any body could be in a 
democracy. The common man could not count on his own 
safety or on the honour of his family. Seditions and con- 
spiracies were frequent, for not only did the mass of the 
people try to overthrow the oligarchs, — who, with the Greek 
aversion to compromise, did not, like the patricians of old 
Rome, know when to yield in time, — but the dominant fam- 
ilies themselves quarrelled and fought against one another. 



chap, xvi THE REPUBLICS OE ANTIQUITY 185 

Aristotle condemns the rule of the Few as more pernicious 
than the rule of the Many. The only thing worse still was 
Tyranny, for which both he and Plato reserve their blackest 
colours. Liberty at least, Liberty as the unchecked develop- 
ment of the individual man, was secured by democracy, as 
Plato recognizes when he condemns its excess. 1 

Two facts stand out to the modern historian when he sur- 
veys these Eepublics from afar. One is this. They reached 
in an early stage of the political development of mankind the 
high-water mark, attained elsewhere only by the primitive 
communities of Switzerland, in the uncontrolled sovereignty 
of the whole people, and in the rule of the Average Man. If 
it was not a success, it was more successful than could well 
have been expected. The value of the lesson for moderns is 
no doubt reduced by the fact that the communities were 
small and that the lowest stratum of the population consisted 
chiefly of slaves. Yet high is the value that remains. 

The other fact is that after all the changes of seventy-five 
generations the tendencies of human nature remain substan- 
tially what they were. Nowhere else do we find so vivid and 
various a record of these tendencies in their full and free 
play, embodied as they are in striking characters and dra- 
matic situations. To those experiments in the government 
of the people by the people which the Greeks were the first 
to try, they brought an incomparable eagerness and resource- 
ful ingenuity. Their fitful life, filled with wars and con- 
spiracies and revolutions, was illumined by a blaze of poetry, 
philosophy, and art, which no subsequent age has equalled. 
Short indeed was the life of these republics, but it was in- 
tense, and it was wonderfully fruitful for all later genera- 
tions. It has for us the unfading charm of showing human 
thought and passion in their primal simplicity. The stream, 
still near its source, runs with the clearness of a mountain 
spring welling up from the deep recesses of the rocks. We 

i-To see the best and the worst that could be said of the Athenian 
democracy, read and consider the two striking descriptions given by 
two famous Athenians, the statesman and the philosopher, the long 
funeral oration of Pericles in Thucydides, Book ii., and the description 
of democracy in Plato, Republic, Book viii. 

To apprehend how the merits and faults of divers forms of government 
presented them to the imaginative but non-philosophical type of Greek 
mind, read the account in Herodotus, Book iii. chap. 80, of the alleged 
discussion of different forms of government among seven Persian nobles. 



186 



DEMOCRACIES IN WORKING 



PABT II 



see men as Nature made them, obeying their first impulses, 
ardent and curious, full of invention, full of imagination. 
We see them unfettered by traditions and recollections, un- 
guided by settled principles, without the habits and preju- 
dices and hesitations which the memories of past failures im- 
plant, weaving theories, enriching the world with ideas and 
maxims as they move onward in the confident joyousness of 
youth. 



CHAPTEE XVII 

THE REPUBLICS OF SPANISH AMERICA 

The Western hemisphere contains (besides the United 
States) twenty Kepublics, in all of which (except French- 
speaking Haiti and Portuguese-speaking Brazil) Spanish is 
the language of the dominant white race. 1 None of these 
States has had one hundred and thirty years of life, but into 
that short period they have crowded a series of vicissitudes 
and experiences which, for their number and the light they 
throw upon certain phases of human nature in politics, find 
a parallel only in the republics of ancient Greece and in 
those of mediaeval Italy. They have, however, received lit- 
tle attention from European historians, and still less from 
political philosophers. Most writers have been content to 
refer to them as awful examples of what befalls people who 
have cast themselves loose from monarchical institutions. 
Even Sir Henry Maine in his ingenious but elusive book on 
Popular Government (published in 1885) did not hesitate to 
make them the basis of his case against democracy. Now, 
whatever one might call them, they were certainly not de- 
mocracies thirty-five years ago, and only two or three could 
be called by that name now. Plato and Aristotle would have 
described them as forms of Tyranny, i.e. illegal despotisms 
resting on military force. An account of them may, there- 

1 These may be classified under three heads : 

Caribbean Republics, all tropical except the northern part of Mexico. 

Mexico. Salvador. Panama. 

Guatemala. Nicaragua. Colombia. 

Honduras. Costa Rica. Venezuela. 

Tropical South American Republics. 
Ecuador. Bolivia. Brazil (the southern 

Peru. Paraguay. part temperate). 

Temperate South American Republics. 
Chile. Argentina. Uruguay. 

With three insular Republics also tropical — Cuba, San Domingo, and 
Haiti ( French-speaking ) . 

187 



188 DEMOCKACIES IN WOKKING pabt ii 

fore, seem to lie outside the province of the present treatise. 
Nevertheless they deserve attention here, for they indicate 
what happens when an attempt is made to establish popular 
self-government where the conditions necessary for its work- 
ing are absent, and they also show, per contra, how a change 
in economic environment may bring about an improvement 
in political capacity, and lead communities towards a peace- 
ful constitutionalism, even where intellectual and moral 
progress lag behind the advance in material prosperity. 

When the colonial dominions of Spain began from a.d. 
1810 onwards to throw off the yoke of the old Spanish mon- 
archy, which had governed them with incomparable selfish- 
ness and stupidity, there were only two regions in which the 
bulk of the population was of European stock. These were 
the regions which are now Argentina and Uruguay, in each 
of which the native Indian tribes, though warlike, were few 
in number and so unfit to resist their conquerors that they 
had before the middle of the nineteenth century been either 
killed off or imperceptibly absorbed into the whites. In all 
the other States that arose on the ruins of the old Viceroyal- 
ties the pure European element was small, ranging from 5 
to 10 per cent, the rest of the population being either pure 
Indian, speaking native languages, or of mixed blood, speak- 
ing Spanish. Political action existed only among the first 
and last of these classes, for the aborigines were either serfs 
working for Spanish masters on plantations or in mines, or 
else had remained in a tribal state, some of them practically 
independent, like the famous Mapoches (Araucanians) of 
Southern Chile and the warlike clans of Northern Mexico. 
Thus for the purposes of politics, those who may be called 
" the citizens " were only a small fraction, and in some re- 
gions an extremely small fraction, of the whole population. 1 

Since 1810 there has been much progress in parts of trop- 
ical America. But the population, such as it was and is, 
remains, in most States, scattered thinly over a vast area. 
Those of European stock, and those of mixed blood called 
mestizos, live mostly in small towns, lying far apart and sep- 
arated by arid deserts or by densely-wooded tropical wilder- 

i Slavery in the proper sense was practically confined to the negroes, 
a small element even in Peru and along the coasts of the Caribbean Sea. 
Brazil is the only country where the coloured people are a large element. 






chap, xvn SPANISH-AMERICAN REPUBLICS 189 

nesses in which man can scarcely make head against the 
forces of Nature. Railways (except in the temperate and 
well-peopled south *) are still few, and some large tropical 
areas remain almost unexplored. Not only the natives but 
a large part of the mestizos have continued in unlettered igno- 
rance. They are citizens only in name, knowing nothing and 
caring nothing, except in a. few cities, of what passes in the 
sphere of government. 

There is no marked social distinction between the families 
of European race and the educated mestizos, and these two 
classes have little in common with the much larger mass of 
the aborigines. Every now and then an Indian of excep- 
tional gifts, like Benito Juarez in Mexico, rises out of that 
mass to the top, and shows himself the intellectual equal of 
the white man. But otherwise the severance is complete, for 
the mestizo reckons himself a white, while the Indian re- 
mains an Indian, and in many districts practically a heathen 
in his beliefs, though he may worship saints and go to mass. 2 

The inhabitants of these Spanish colonies began their 
career as independent States without political training or 
experience. There had been no national and very few local 
institutions through which they could have learnt how to 
manage their own affairs. Spain had not given them, as 
England had given to her North American colonies, any 
town meetings, any municipal councils, any church organiza- 
tions in which the laity bore a part. Associative bonds to 
link men together did not exist, except the control of the serf 
by his master. There were regions in which society, hardly 
advanced from what it had been in mediaeval Europe, did not 
possess even tribal communities much less any feudal organ- 
izations, such as those out of which European kingdoms de- 
veloped. There was, in fact, no basis whatever for common 
political action, so the brand-new constitutions which a 
few of the best-educated colonial leaders had drafted on the 
model of the United States Constitution did not correspond 
to anything real in the circumstances of these new so-called 
republican States. 

The long guerilla warfare, in the course of which the in- 

i Including Southern Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Southern Brazil. 

2 The purely heathen population is small, existing chiefly in the 
tropical regions on both sides of the Equator; but even in Mexico 
Christianity is only skin-deep among the aborigines. 



190 DEMOCRACIES IN WORKING pabt n 

surgent colonists had worn out the resources of Spain till 
she gave up the contest in despair, had implanted in all these 
countries military habits, had made the soldier the leader, 
had accustomed the inhabitants to the rule of force. No one 
thought of obeying the law, for there was no law except on 
paper. Force and force only counted. The constitutions 
had provided elected presidents and elected legislatures, and 
courts of law, but what were such institutions without the 
sense of legal right, the means of enforcing it, and the habit 
of obedience to legally constituted authority | 

These things being so, nearly all of these new States, 
except Chile, lapsed into a condition of chronic revolution. 
The executive head was of necessity a soldier, obliged to rule 
by the sword. If he ruled badly, or made himself otherwise 
unpopular, it was by the sword that lie had to be overthrown. 
Military talent, or even fierce and ruthless energy without 
COnspicUOHfl talent, brought men to the front, and made them, 
under the title of President, irresponsible dictators. They 
were not necessarily wicked men, Bfl were most of the Greek 
tyrants. They were what most lighting rulers almost in- 
evitably become in such conditions, hard, selfish, and un- 
scrupulous, because they live in the midst of violence, and 
can prevail only by a severity which in the more brutal na- 
tures passes into cruelty. 

Although these Presidents were mere despots, the newly- 
formed States continued to be called Republics, and pur- 
ported to be living under their formally enacted constitu- 
tions. The farce of electing a President was observed. The 
reigning potentate who bore that title usually secured his own 
re-election, or might occasionally put in a dependant to keep 
the place warm for him till he resumed official control. 
Sometimes, when he had accumulated and invested in Europe 
a sufficiently large fortune, he transferred himself, like Guz- 
man Blanco of Venezuela, to Paris, to enjoy the evening of 
his days by spending there his ill-gotten gains. So, too, there 
was a legislature, usually of two Houses, elected for the pre- 
scribed legal term, but at the bidding of the President, who 
made sure of an ample majority, either by force or by fraud. 
The judges were his creatures placed on the bench to do his 
bidding, and allowed, when he had no orders to give, to levy 
toll upon or accept " gratifications " from the suitors. It 



chap, xvii SPANISH-AMERICAN REPUBLICS 191 

was seldom necessary to lay heavy taxation on the citizens, 
because the dictator found it easier to raise, by loans in Eu- 
rope at high rates of interest, the money wherewithal to pay 
his troops or, if he cared for the development of the country, 
to construct harbours and railways. That a load of debt was 
thus imposed on his successors was of no concern to him, 
though it sometimes embroiled them with European govern- 
ments unwise enough to take up the cause of the creditors. 
Meanwhile, what of the people? The great bulk were in- 
different, for the recurring revolutions scarcely aifected them, 
and administration was no better and very little worse under 
one dictator than under another. Politics were left to knots 
of intriguers and adventurers in the capital and a few other 
towns, while the rest of the better-educated class pursued the 
even tenor of their way on their plantations or in the petty 
commerce of the interior, since overseas trade was in the 
hands of foreign merchants, at first mostly British, after- 
wards German also, established at the seaports. The great 
mass of the aborigines and the poorer mestizos scarcely knew 
of the political changes except when some army or marauding 
band swept past them, levying contributions on its way. 
The small armies who followed a revolutionary leader and 
maintained an intermittent civil war were chiefly composed 
of Indians, forced into the ranks or taking service at low pay, 
and officered by men of Spanish or mixed blood. They 
fought fiercely, as was shown by a loss of life in the battles 
which was large in proportion to the numbers engaged. 1 
Military habits were kept up not merely by internal but also 
by international strife, for some of the republics were often 
at war with their neighbours, the Northern States fighting 
on land, while Chile and Peru fought at sea also, each bring- 
ing its ironclad warships from Europe. The civil war in- 
volved no political principles except to some extent the in- 
terests of the Church, which divided men in the Caribbean 
States, and to some extent also in Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, 
and Uruguay. I say " the Church " and not Keligion, for 
as the whole population was, till a comparatively recent time, 
Roman Catholic in outward profession, the strife had noth- 

1 In the long war which Lopez, dictator of Paraguay, an almost purely 
Indian State, maintained against Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil from 
1865 to 1870, nearly the whole adult male population of Paraguay 
perished. 



192 DEMOCRACIES IN WORKING pabt n 

ing to do with doctrine but only with ecclesiastical privilege. 
In Mexico there was a strong clerical and latterly also a 
strong anti-clerical party. Not till the overthrow of the 
Austrian Archduke Maximilian, whom Louis Napoleon had 
in a luckless hour placed on the tottering throne of Mexico, 
did the anti-clericals under the native Indian Juarez win a 
decisive victory. Strangely enough, the racial issue between 
Indians and Europeans was hardly at all involved. The 
aboriginal populations, though they had retained a sullen 
aversion to the descendants of those Conquistadores who had 
followed Cortes or Pizarro, were too depressed and too un- 
organized to be able to act together or find capable leaders. 
Their last effort had been made in the great insurrection of 
the Peruvian Tupac Amaru (in 1781), which was sup- 
pressed with hideous cruelty by the Spanish viceroy of that 
now distant day. 

Through this long welter of revolutions and dictatorships 
there appeared no men comparable for statesmanship or mili- 
tary genius, or for elevation of character, to the two heroes 
who won independence from Spain, the Venezuelan Bolivar 
and the Argentine San Martin. Conditions did not favour 
the growth of large minds animated by high purposes. But 
there were plenty of men of force and daring. Francia in 
Paraguay and Rosas in Argentina are conspicuous examples 
of strong dictators ruling by terror, who did nothing to help 
their countries forward. Barrios in Guatemala, who, like 
Louis XL of France, is said to have carried his captives 
about in cages, has left the greatest reputation for cruelty; 
and Zelaya of Nicaragua, driven out by the United States a 
few years ago, is probably the last who maintained the tradi- 
tion of torture. The lowest depth of savagery was reached 
in the Republic of Haiti, an almost purely negro country 
since it was lost to France in 1803. x 

This state of things has lasted down to our own day in 
most of the twenty Republics, though of course in very vary- 
ing degrees. The Caribbean States of Central and Northern 
South America (excepting Salvador and Costa Rica, but in- 
cluding Ecuador) have, together with Haiti, been on the 

i Haiti has recently fallen under the influence of the United States, 
with a consequent improvement in its social as well as its economio 
conditions. 






chap, xvn SPANISH-AMERICAN REPUBLICS 193 

lowest level. Salvador, Bolivia, perhaps Colombia and Peru 
also, and now even Paraguay, slightly affected by its south- 
ern neighbours, are better. Cuba and San Domingo, under 
the protecting and steadying influence of the United States, 
are better still. Whether better or worse, however, and by 
whatever name the governments of these States may be called, 
none of them is a democracy. But it is one of the oddest 
instances of the power of a word that the less educated and 
even many of the more educated persons among the free na- 
tions have continued, especially in the United States, to be- 
lieve them to be, because called " Republics," entitled to a 
confidence and sympathy which would not be given to a mili- 
tary tyranny under any other name. Chile, Argentina, 
Uruguay, and Brazil belong to a different category. They 
are true Republics, if not all of them democracies, and each 
requires a short separate treatment. 

Chile has had a history unlike that of the other States. 
She has been from the first a constitutional Republic, some 
of whose features recall the oligarchy that governed Eng- 
land during the reigns of the two first Georges. Blessed by 
a temperate climate, a long stretch of sea-coast and (in her 
southern regions) a continuous cultivable area sufficient to 
support a large agricultural and pastoral community, every 
part of the country being in touch by sea with every other 
part, she has also enjoyed the advantage of possessing both 
a native and a Spanish stock of unusually sound quality — 
the Spanish settlers having mostly come from Northern 
Spain, many of them Basques, while the native Indians, 
though less advanced towards civilization than were the Pe- 
ruvians, were of stronger fibre, as was proved by the valiant 
resistance of the never-conquered Araucanians. There is a 
good deal of pure European blood left in Chile, and the 
mixed race is both manly and industrious, with much inde- 
pendence of character. The leading families, holding con- 
siderable estates, have formed a sort of territorial oligarchy, 
keeping the government in their hands and getting on well 
with the peasantry, who, content to be guided by them in 
political matters, usually vote with their landlords. Though 
public peace was sometimes troubled in earlier days, the last 
sixty years have seen only one serious civil war, that of 1891 

between President Balmaceda and the Assembly, in which 
vol. i o 



194 DEMOCRACIES IN WORKING pabt n 

the latter prevailed ; and the Republic has seldom had to fear 
conspiracies or revolts. The army and navy have been kept 
highly efficient. The machinery of the constitution, under 
which the suffrage has been extended to include practically 
all adult males, an experiment which some Chileans have 
deemed premature, seems to work pretty smoothly. The 
President appoints and dismisses the ministers who are 
nevertheless held responsible to the legislature. Votes are 
honestly counted, but there is said to be a good deal of elec- 
toral corruption, though, as it is not confined to any one 
party, it does not prevent the general result from conforming 
to public opinion. 1 A system of proportional representation 
adopted some time ago appears to give satisfaction. The 
public credit has always been carefully guarded, so much so 
indeed that, during the civil war above referred to, both the 
contending parties tendered to the European bondholders the 
interest due upon the national debt. The men who lead in 
public affairs have been, as a rule, persons of standing and 
reputation in the country as well as of statesmanlike capacity. 
Neither Senators nor Deputies receive a salary. 

Argentina, which had made a good beginning in the early 
days of the War of Independence when led by San Martin 
and Belgrano, relapsed after a time into a long period of dis- 
order, and has now emerged therefrom mainly through the 
working of economic causes. She possesses in her Pampas 
a vast area of pastoral and arable land, equalled for its pro- 
ductive capacity only by that part of North- Western Amer- 
ica which lies between the Rocky Mountains and the Great 
Lakes, and by the vast plain between the Irtish and the Mid- 
dle Yenisei in Western Siberia. She has the further ad- 
vantage of being peopled by men of an almost pure European 
stock, two-thirds Spanish, one-third, through recent immigra- 
tion, Italian. The climate, hot in the tropical North and too 
cold for cultivation in the Patagonian South, is through most 
of the territory sufficiently temperate to enable these two 
South European races to work under the sun, and the in- 
dustry of the Italians is now emulated by that of the immi- 
grants who have recently flocked in from Spain. While the 
tyranny of President Rosas lasted, material progress was 
slow, because internal communications were wanting, and 
i There is an educational qualification, but it is not strictly enforced. 



chap, xvn SPANISH-AMERICAN REPUBLICS 195 

foreigners feared to provide capital for creating them. But 
in the year that followed his expulsion in 1852 revolutions 
and civil wars became less frequent, the wild half-Indian 
Gauchos, from whom the bulk of revolutionary levies had 
been drawn, having begun to vanish, or be transmuted into 
peaceful cowboys. Immigration by degrees increased, Eng- 
lish companies began to construct railways, the fertile lands 
were brought under cultivation, exports of hides, wool, and 
meat grew apace, and the growing trade brought the coun- 
try within the range of European influences, intellectual as 
well as commercial. The value of agricultural land rose 
swiftly, especially after it had been found possible to ob- 
tain water from artesian wells in regions without surface 
streams. Its owners acquired with their accumulating 
wealth an interest in the tranquillity of the State. Every- 
body who felt the touch of prosperity — owners, traders, 
work-people — saw, as they watched a network of railways 
constructed by British capital spreading over the land, and 
Buenos Aires expanding into one of the great commercial 
cities of the world, that prosperity could remain only under 
stable conditions, which would draw more and more of for- 
eign money and of foreign immigrants to supply the labour 
needed for the development of the country. The more in- 
dustry there was, and the more prosperity, the smaller be- 
came the proportion of those who joined in revolutions, as 
men had been wont to do, from the love of fighting or to 
better their fortunes. 

The long-continued antagonism of the provinces to the 
commercial centre of Buenos Aires gave rise to armed strug- 
gles which seem to have now died down. Since 1890 there 
have been some troubles, yet no serious or widespread dis- 
turbance of public peace, and the minds of men have accus- 
tomed themselves to constitutional methods of government. 
The change was marked by the fact that political chiefs who 
here, as in the other disorderly republics, had been mostly 
soldiers began to be mostly lawyers. Whoever looks through 
the annals of South American States will find that nearly 
every leader bears the title either of General or of Doctor 
of Laws. After Bosas, arms began to yield to the gown. 
The Presidents, if not always elected by unimpeachably legal 
methods, have not been installed by force. The constitu- 



196 DEMOCRACIES IN WORKING pabt n 

tional machine works imperfectly, but it works. The old 
factions have gone: generals do not plan pronunciamentos : 
violence is going out of fashion. 

The President is chosen by an electoral college modelled 
on that provided in the United States, and enjoys similar 
powers, including a veto on legislation which can be over- 
ridden by a two-thirds majority. He holds office for six 
years, is not immediately re-eligible, appoints the ministers 
who, being responsible to the legislature, countersign all his 
acts. They cannot sit, but can speak, in either Chamber. 
The Legislature consists of a Senate of twenty-eight, chosen 
by the provincial Legislatures and a Chamber of Deputies 
of one hundred and twenty members, elected, as are the 
Presidential electors, by universal suffrage, the term of Sen- 
ator being nine, that of a Deputy four years. The elections 
used to be largely made by the Government in power, who 
respected forms by allowing a certain number of their oppo- 
nents to be returned to the Chamber to discharge the func- 
tions of an Opposition, and recently a clause in the Con- 
stitution has been severely strained by the practice of what, is 
called Intervention, i. e. the replacement of existing Provin- 
cial officials by Federal appointees, so as to enable a majority 
in the Legislature to be secured for the party to which the 
President belongs, there being a strong tendency in Spanish 
America to vote for the party which holds executive power. 
There seems to be now no taint of force and not much of 
fraud in the making up of lists and counting of votes; nor 
does bribery seem to prevail largely. Parties are still fluid 
and imperfectly organized. They aro based less on prin- 
ciples than on attachment to leaders; and the bulk of the 
citizens showed no great interest in their civic duties until 
voting was made compulsory by a law of 1012. 

The legislators (salary $1500 a month) are not very 
zealous in the discharge of their duties, and leave much to 
the President, who is at least as powerful as his prototype in 
the United States. Countries with only a short experience 
of constitutional government are apt, as has been recently 
seen in some of the new kingdoms of south-eastern Europe, 
to allow the Executive to overtop the Legislature. Municipal 
administration is described as fairly honest, i.e. there is not 



chap, xvn SPANISH-AMERICAN REPUBLICS 197 

very much peculation but plenty of jobbery in the granting 
of contracts and the execution of local improvements. 

The dispensation of justice is a weak point in South 
American as well as in South European countries. Legal 
proceedings are dilatory, and the Bench not always trusted, 
though it sins less by accepting pecuniary inducements than 
by yielding to the influences of family connection and per- 
sonal friendship. Order is now tolerably well maintained 
throughout the country by a police as efficient as can be ex- 
pected in vast and thinly peopled regions. Dynamite out- 
rages were frequent in Buenos Aires some years ago, but 
the extremists who resorted to them have latterly been pur- 
suing their aims by means of strikes on a very large scale. 
Labour unrest is, however, no greater than in Europe and 
North America, and needs mention only for the sake of in- 
dicating that so far from being due to economic distress it is 
now common in new countries where there is still unoccupied 
land, and wages have long been high. 

The respect for legality and the general tone of public life 
have been sensibly rising in Argentina. Few of the recent 
Presidents and ministers have incurred suspicion of mal- 
practices. Whether this can be said of the deputies seems 
more doubtful. Seditions arising out of angrily contested 
elections are now confined to cases in which the National 
Government intervenes because a provincial election is alleged 
to have been unfairly conducted, and such disturbances do 
not necessarily spread beyond the particular province. 
There has been little discontent except among the Socialists 
and Anarchists of Buenos Aires, for employment and pros- 
perity abound. The increase in the number of small land- 
holders, due partly to the equal division of estates passing by 
inheritance, partly to rise in the value of land which has led 
to the breaking up of purchasable estates into lots by indus- 
trious immigrants, is making for the stability of government, 
as it enlarges the class which has a motive for supporting 
public order. 

Nevertheless, although the Government is democratic in 
form and not palpably undemocratic in practice, the rule of 
public opinion is not yet fully established. Men's minds are 
perhaps too much occupied by material considerations, the 
small cultivator thinking of produce and prices, the rich 



198 DEMOCRACIES IN WORKING pabt n 

landowner enjoying the luxurious life of the capital, to give 
heed to politics. Under such conditions no high level of ad- 
ministration or legislation can be looked for. But this does 
not reduce the interest which the student of politics finds in 
watching the growth of institutions, and the development of 
what used to be a military tyranny into what is becoming a 
pacific self-governing community. The Argentine democ- 
racy, whatever may be the standard of public virtue they 
maintain, will possess the advantage of being free from ex- 
ternal dangers, so that little of the revenue need go to mili- 
tary and naval armaments, and free also from pauperism, so 
that economic and social problems may be handled without 
the passion engendered by suffering. Here, as in the Aus- 
tralian States, the predominance of a single great city is too 
marked. One-fifth of the whole people dwell in Buenos 
Aires, whose excitable radicalism or socialism is apt to pre- 
vail against the more conservative provinces. It is to Argen- 
tina what Paris is to France, the centre of literature and the 
chief maker of public opinion by its ably written and power- 
ful press. 

Uruguay is another South American country in which a 
true republican Government, professing to be, and gradually 
becoming, a democracy, now exists. Its racial and physical 
conditions resemble those of Argentina 1 (of which it was at 
one time a part), and the broad outlines of its history, since 
it achieved independence, are not dissimilar. It is, however, 
very much smaller, and is a Unitary, not a Federal State. 
Its population is almost entirely of European stock, and its 
national sentiment extremely strong. In it also the progress 
of material development and the consequent growth of trade 
with Europe have worked for good. The creation of an ex- 
cellent railway system, the influx of immigrants from Italy 
and Spain, the extension of education through a people now 
settling down to work, have begun to give the inhabitants, 
who were, till late in the nineteenth century, distracted by 
civil wars, an interest in order, and honest administration. 
Thus government has become more constitutional, 2 and elcc- 

i The climate, tempered by the ocean, has less marked extremes than 
Argentina, and the surface is more undulating. 

2 An interesting experiment in Government is now being tried under 
the new Constitution (1919) in the creation of a body called the 
National Council of Administration, consisting of nine persons elected 



chap, xvn SPANISH-AMEKICAN REPUBLICS 199 

tions a better expression of popular sentiment. The Consti- 
tution is no longer a sham, though the initiative and power of 
the President still overshadow the Legislature. The factions 
that divided the nation since 1825, adherents of two rival 
Generals, are not yet extinct, one of them having become a 
more or less clerical, the other an anti-clerical party. In 
1910 (when I visited the country) the Whites, enraged at 
the manipulation of the elections by the Reds, who then con- 
trolled the Government, started a short-lived insurrection. 
But clericalism is fast dying out, and the hereditary tradi- 
tions of the Whites cannot keep it long alive. The states- 
man who has practically dominated the country, whether in 
office as President or out of it, is a person of advanced opin- 
ions, eager to try bold experiments which will take the wind 
out the sails of the (comparatively few) Socialists of Monte 
Video. 

Brazil is (except Cuba, which was abandoned by Spain 
in 1898) the latest born of all the American Republics, for 
it retained its connection with Portugal till 1822 and did not 
dismiss its learned and amiable Emperor Dom Pedro II. till 
1889. The change from a monarchical to a republican form 
did not mean much in substance, for the Crown had exercised 
very little power, and the masses have exercised quite as little 
under either name. The chief difference has been that re- 
volts, unknown before, have occurred since, though none has 
risen to the dimensions of a civil war. The hereditary mon- 
archy had the advantage of offering no occasion for attempts 
by military adventurers to seize the Presidency by violence, 
and the ties it maintained with Portugal had enabled Euro- 
pean influences to play more freely on the country than was 
the case with the rest of South America after 1810. Mate- 
rial development has moved faster and political life has been 
more active under the new Republic, but the country is as far 
as ever from being a democracy. 

Its area (3,300,000 square miles) exceeds that of the 
United States, but the population (estimated at 26,000,000) 

for six years by direct popular vote, one-third retiring every two years. 
They appoint the ministers, and exercise all powers not expressly given 
to the President, who is popularly elected, and not re-eligible till after 
eight years. His veto on financial proposals may be overridden by a 
two-thirds majority of the Council. Manhood suffrage and propor- 
tional representation are established. 



200 DEMOCRACIES IN WORKING part n 

is extremely sparse, except in parts of the south and along 
the Atlantic coast. Most of the interior is a forest wilder- 
ness, in which a few towns, chiefly peopled by Indians, stand 
here and there along the great rivers. Of that population 
about one-sixth are aborigines, nearly one-third full blacks, 
another third blacks with more or less admixture of white 
blood, and a little more than one-sixth pure whites, about 
half of these of Portuguese stock, the rest Germans and Ital- 
ians. The vast majority of the negroes and half-breeds are 
uneducated and below the level of a comprehension of politics 
or even of their own interests in politics. I mention these 
facts because they show why government cannot in such a 
country be really democratic, whatever the electoral suffrage. 
Power inevitably falls to the intelligent minority. 

Brazil is a Federation, and properly so, considering not 
only its immense extent but the distance from one another of 
the few more thickly-peopled regions. The State Govern- 
ments enjoy large powers and pursue their own policies, which 
are more or less wise according to the character of their respec- 
tive legislatures, whose composition is better in the temperate 
Southern States, where the population is mostly white, than 
in the tropical regions, where a handful of whites control a 
multitude of coloured people. The Central Government con- 
sists of a President, elected for four years by direct popular 
vote; a Senate, elected for nine years; and a Chamber of 
Deputies, elected for three years. The suffrage excludes 
illiterates. The ministers are appointed by the President, 
are responsible to him, and do not sit in the Legislature. 
Elections are conducted with little respect for legality, and, 
when fraud fails to secure the desired result, a resort to force 
may be looked for. Not long ago the ballot-boxes in one of 
the greater States were, because it w r as feared that they would 
show a majority for a candidate opposed to the Government, 
seized by a body of police disguised as rioters, carried off to 
a distance and destroyed, whereupon the Governor of the 
State exercised his constitutional right of providing for the 
contingency of a loss of ballots, and appointed a Govern- 
mental candidate to the office which the election had been 
held to fill. There is plenty of ability, and an even greater 
profusion of oratorical talent, among the legislators, but in- 
trigue rules, and, as M. Clemenceau observed after his visit 



chap, xvn SPANISH-AMERICAN REPUBLICS 201 

some ten years ago, " the Constitution enjoys a chiefly theo- 
retic authority." An exceptionally skilful intriguer may, 
like the strong leader who lately fell a victim to assassina- 
tion, be effective master of the country. 

The Republic is in fact an oligarchy, not of land-owning 
families, like that of Chile, but of such among the richer 
men, whether landlords or heads of industrial, financial, or 
commercial enterprises, as occupy themselves with politics. 
Like all oligarchies they use their power for their personal 
benefit, yet with some regard to national interests also, for the 
Brazilians are intensely proud of their magnificent country, 
and claim for it the leadership of South America. But be- 
tween soaring patriotism and self-regarding schemes the 
welfare of the masses receives less attention than it needs. 
Something might be done for local self-government, un- 
favourable as the conditions are; and a large extension of 
education is urgently required. The traveller is surprised 
to find that in a country rich in poets and orators there does 
not exist any duly equipped university. One is sometimes 
reminded of the Slave States of the American Union as they 
stood before the Civil War, where a government nominally 
democratic was really the rule of a planter oligarchy. It is 
only thirty-two years since slavery was abolished in Brazil. 
Were the States of the temperate South, where an industrious 
population, mainly of European stock, has attained pros- 
perity, to cast themselves loose from the tropical regions in 
order to form a separate republic, they might create in time 
a real democracy. 

It remains to say a few words about Mexico, the greatest 
of the northern republics and the one whose prospects of 
peaceful progress have been most suddenly darkened by re- 
cent misfortunes. Much of the country, indeed nearly all 
the northern territory, is a desert, being part of that arid 
region which occupies a long strip of North America from 
Canada to the Tropic of Cancer. Southern Mexico, however, 
is a land of wonderful natural resources, with a delightful 
climate on that high tableland where the barbarous tribes of 
ancient Anahuac were passing into civilization when the 
process was arrested by the invasion of Hernando Cortes. 
Nearly two-thirds of the present inhabitants are Indians, 
many of them still in a tribal state, some few heathens. The 



202 DEMOCRACIES IN WORKING part n 

rest are mestizos, with about 250,000 of pure or nearly pure 
Spaniards. The country adopted its first constitution, a 
Federal one modelled on that of the United States, a cen- 
tury ago; and this instrument, amended in some points, has 
remained nominally in force ever since, though never put 
into effective operation. The extinction of the rule of Spain 
was followed by a long series of civil wars, in which one ad- 
venturer after another contended for power, the authority 
and possessions of the Catholic hierarchy being often in- 
volved. The capture and death in 1865 of the unfortunate 
Maximilian, when the French army that had supported him 
retired from the country under the menace of interference 
by the United States, sealed the defeat of the Church, which 
has never recovered from the blow. Juarez was presently 
replaced by Porfirio Diaz, who under the title of President 
ruled as a dictator (with one short interval) for thirty-five 
years, upholding the Constitution in form, and causing elec- 
tions to be regularly held, on which occasions the soldiers 
were directed to drop a few voting papers into the ballot- 
boxes, leei they should he found empty. 3 Administrative 
work was conducted, better than over before, by the Governors 
of the States under the President's general directions, while 
the political management of each district was entrusted to a 
person called the Political Chief (Jefe politico). In blood 
Porfirio was one-half or three-fonrths an Indian, but no 
Spaniard of the Cortes type could have shown higher prac- 
tical gifts. The country was pacified, brigandage, which had 
been rife for many years, sternly suppressed, and such of 
the brigands as survived turned into an etlicicnt local gen- 
darmerie (Rurales). Railways and harbours were con- 
structed, mining developed, foreign capital attracted, the 
finances prudently handled, whatever could promote material 
development encouraged. The country became <-<i{v for trav- 
ellers, for troops were always promptly despatched to any 
spot where the telegraph announced an outbreak, and when 
a robbery occurred the bad characters most likely to have had 
a hand in it were forthwith shot without trial. Every one 
extolled the wisdom as well ;is the energy of the now benevo- 
lent autocrat who had outlived the enemies of his earlier 
years and had ceased to need the methods by which he had 
i So I was told when visiting Mexico in 1902. 



chap, xvn SPANISH-AMEKICAN REPUBLICS 203 

reduced their number. He was one of the great men of his 
time, resolute, clear-sighted, swift in action. He even tried 
to induce his Legislature to pass measures on its own initia- 
tive, but found before long that it was unsafe to leave with 
them a power they were likely to use unwisely. Unfortu- 
nately he did not discern, or at any rate did not attempt, one 
task of supreme importance. In Mexico, as in most parts of 
Spanish America, the land (except where occupied by In- 
dians in a quasi-tribal condition) has been since the Con- 
quest in the hands of large proprietors, who work it by na- 
tive labour. The Indian " peon " is a sort of serf, ill-paid 
and often ill-treated, discontented with his lot, but not know- 
ing how to improve it. He and the poorer half-breeds, who 
are landless and little better off than the peon, are the mate- 
rial out of which robber bands and insurgent troops are easily 
made. It should have been the first aim of a wise policy to 
settle these people on the land as owners or as peasant culti- 
vators with some security of tenure. The Mexican Indians 
are intelligent as well as good workers : the Spanish con- 
querors noted their superiority to the South American 
aborigines. But Diaz left this problem unsolved. The re- 
sult was seen when the standard of revolt was raised in 1911, 
and he, being then over eighty years of age, allowed disorders 
to spread till he was himself obliged to quit the country, 
which then relapsed into an anarchy of general pillage and 
murder by revolutionary bands such as had prevailed before 
the days of Juarez. Could Diaz have found a successor who 
while following out his policy with equal energy would have 
given the land to the people and brought education within 
their reach, Mexico might within half a century have begun 
to be fit for constitutional liberty. Now, however, its first 
need is for a government strong enough to restore and main- 
tain order, and when that has been done, and industry has 
revived, to remove the causes of economic unrest, give security 
for the employment of capital, and lay the foundations of 
local self-government. 

The general moral of Spanish American history, for the 
sake of which these descriptions have been given, is almost 
too obvious to need stating. Why confer free self-governing 
institutions on a people unfit to comprehend or use them? 
The very notion of establishing a government by the votes 



204 DEMOCRACIES IN WORKING pabt n 

of citizens and controlling the action of a legislature and an 
executive by holding the representatives responsible for the 
use they might make of their power, was not within the 
horizon of the vast bulk of the colonial subjects of Spain; 
much less could they work the elaborate machinery of two 
legislative Houses with an elected President and his Minis- 
ters. In such circumstances, power inevitably fell to the 
Executive head, the person whom the people could see and 
know, and to whom belonged the command of the army. The 
interest of the community required that this power, needed 
for the maintenance of order within and defence against ag- 
gression by violent neighbours, should be lodged in one 
strong hand. To subject it to a legislature of inexperienced 
and short-sighted men, probably selfish and practically ir- 
responsible, because controlled by no public opinion, was to 
invite confusion and disaster. The people did not rule in 
these republics because they could not rule. Whatever the 
plans of theorists and the exhortations of the wise, every peo- 
ple comes sooner or later to that kind of government which 
the facts prescribe. Thus a nominally elective Presidency 
became a dictatorship. As each President was obliged to 
exceed his strictly legal authority because it would not have 
enabled him to cope with the situation, the distinction be- 
tween his legal rights and the powers he was actually exer- 
cising was obliterated. He passed into a usurper, ruling and 
compelled to rule by force, so that those who attacked him by 
force, with or without a moral justification, could claim a 
title little worse than his own. The very conception of power 
de iure had no time to spring up and establish itself -in the 
popular mind, for all power was de facto only. As the gen- 
eration that had been accustomed to obey the Spanish Vice- 
roys passed away, a new generation grew up accustomed to 
a regime of force. To create afresh that idea of obedience 
to duly constituted legal authority which is essential to a de- 
mocracy was a slow process in a population a large part of 
which was in every State ignorant and semi-barbarous. In 
most of the tropical States this process has hardly yet begun ; 
in none, except Chile, has it been quite completed. Regard- 
ing the more backward republics, such as Venezuela and 
Ecuador, and those in Central America, it is difficult to make 
any prediction. If the Western hemisphere were to-day in 



chap, xvu SPANISH-AMERICAN REPUBLICS 205 

sixteenth-century conditions, these countries would probably 
be seized by some naval power and ruled as subject depend- 
encies, as Holland rules Java and France Madagascar. 
Since that cannot happen now, we can but put our trust in 
that vis medicatrix naturae which slowly brings the public 
opinion of the world to bear upon the regions where its action 
is most needed. If the political prospects for tropical Amer- 
ica seem somewhat more hopeful to-day than they were 
seventy years ago, it is because economic conditions are 
improving. 

What form of government would have been best suited 
to these communities after they had expelled the Spanish 
Viceroys ? 

Those who look back with the experience of a century can 
see that the form which was adopted, suggested by the ex- 
ample of the United States Constitution, was unsuitable. 
No wonder it failed, for the conditions were entirely unlike 
those which the founders of English colonies in new lands 
had to their hand. In the temperate parts of North America 
and in Australia there was no large aboriginal population liv- 
ing in a barbarous or semi-civilized state. The colonizing 
communities destined to spread out and replenish the regions 
to be settled were English, carrying with them the habits and 
traditions of an old political system. 

What would have happened if things had been left to take 
their natural course and no attempt made to imitate the 
United States Constitution % Among the various lines along 
which some sort of political organization might have devel- 
oped itself I may mention three, any one of which might have 
better conformed to the social and economic conditions of the 
aboriginal peoples in the tropical regions. 

One of these lines would have been the growth of small 
local, loosely connected or practically independent, communi- 
ties, some with an urban centre, some semi-tribal, each ruled 
by a chief (native or mestizo) or by a group of the wealthier 
and more capable Spanish colonial landholding families. 
Such families represented the civilizing forces, and would 
have been obeyed by the Indians, some of whom were their 
tenants, some otherwise dependent upon them. The rule of 
the chiefs or oligarchic groups would have been harsh and not 
very progressive, but there would have been some sort of 



206 DEMOCRACIES IN WORKING part n 

order, with the chance of a peaceful aggregation of the com- 
munities into larger wholes as the country began to be de- 
veloped and opened up to commerce. 

Another possible line of development would have been the 
transmutation of each Viceroyalty into a sort of monarchy, 
the head of which would have had a legal power, thus con- 
tinuing the tradition of obedience to duly constituted author- 
ity. Law and Fact would have been in a truer relation than 
under a government professing to depend on a popular elec- 
tion, which must obviously be a farce under the existing con- 
ditions. For the success of such a scheme there would have 
been needed in each country a man not only of force but of 
some statesmanlike quality and some military talent. It 
might have failed, as it failed when tried in Mexico. But 
it would have had at least as good a chance as the plan of 
representative bodies nominated by presidents who were 
usurping dictators. 

A third form would have been that of an oligarchy com- 
posed of the leading families of the country. This came to 
pass, and has worked with comparatively little friction, in 
Chile, where no doubt the conditions were exceptionally fa- 
vourable. It would have been difficult in Peru and Bolivia 
and Venezuela, owing (among other things) to the wide 
empty spaces between the small centres of population, and 
impossible in such a country as Haiti, where there were no 
families superior in knowledge and vigour to the ignorant and 
semi-savage masses. But in most of the countries it would 
have corresponded better to the elements of strength which 
the actual conditions presented, elements capable of govern- 
ing and interested in good government, than did a sham Re- 
public under the pretended control of an nominally elected 
Legislature. Such an oligarchy would have been likely to 
pass naturally, in the fulness of time and under the influence 
of the Time-Spirit, into a more popular form of government. 

These are speculations. But about the moral of the whole 
story there is no question. Do not give to a people institu- 
tions for which it is unripe in the simple faith that the tool 
will give skill to the workman's hand. Respect Facts. 
Man is in each country not what we may wish him to be, but 
what Nature and History have made him. 

One question remains. What is likely to be the future 



chap, xvn SPANISH-AMERICAN REPUBLICS 207 

of these new republics, and what the prospect that they will 
in time become true democracies ? To answer this question 
let us see what have been the forces which have enabled some 
among the Eepublics to achieve real progress during the last 
half -century. 

Chief among these has been the development in each coun- 
try of its material resources. The growth of wealth through 
agriculture and mining has increased the number of persons 
interested in order and good government, and has led to the 
improvement of roads, railways, internal steam navigation. 
Education has followed, though slowly ; universities have been 
founded; an indigenous literature has sprung up. Inter- 
course with foreign countries has grown, and has brought not 
only those loans which, though perhaps indispensable, were 
often a source of temptation, but also the ideas and mental 
habits of Europe and the United States into the Spanish 
American population. As the traditions of violence and dis- 
order died down, free institutions and the way to work them 
began to be understood. Power passed peaceably from one 
president to another. The General is being replaced by the 
Doctor of Laws, and the man of law, even if he be tricky, is 
less dangerous than the man of the sword. Fraud is better 
than force, because fraud, however odious, does not disturb 
public order, and it is easier to prevent its recurrence than to 
break the habit of insurrection. It is in this way that Argen- 
tina and Uruguay have within the last forty years become po- 
litically civilized, and indeed more civilized than some States 
of Europe. In Mexico material progress had gone so far 
that if Porfirio Diaz, or a ruler of equal gifts, could have 
reigned for another forty years, and had grappled with the 
Indian question, the country might have been where Argen- 
tina and Chile are now. Bolivia has advanced, and in Brazil 
the southern states at least are capable of working a genuine 
popular government. Those who understand what South 
America had been under the Viceroys and what she was when 
she emerged from the long struggle for independence will not 
despond of her future. 



FRANCE 

CHAPTER XVIII 

LAND AND HISTORY 

Among the countries in which popular government pre- 
vails, France is in two respects unique. She adopted democ- 
racy by a swift and sudden stroke, without the long and 
gradual preparation through which the United States and 
Switzerland and England passed, springing almost at one 
bound out of absolute monarchy into the complete political 
equality of all citizens. And France did this not merely be- 
cause the rule of the people was deemed the completest rem- 
edy for pressing evils, nor because other kinds of government 
had been tried and found wanting, but also in deference to 
general abstract principles which were taken for self-evident 
truths. Frenchmen have always shown, along with their 
gift for generalizing, an enjoyment of and a faith in general 
theories beyond that of the other free peoples. Thus the 
philosophical student of human institutions who desires to 
test political principles by their results finds a peculiar inter- 
est in examining the politics of France, for it is there, even 
more than in America, that the doctrines on which democracy 
is founded have told most upon the national mind, and been 
most frequently pushed to their logical conclusions. The his- 
tory of the three Republics that have successively arisen since 
1792 covers only sixty years in all. But within that space 
of time France has passed through many phases and tried 
many experiments. There has been much brilliant oratory, 
and endless political ingenuity. No period in history throws 
more light not only on the contrasts of theory with practice, 
but upon the tendencies which move and direct human 
society. 

As the student of the contemporary politics of a country 

must everywhere try to understand the conditions, natural 

208 



chap, xvin LAND AND HISTOKT 209 

and historical, amid which the form of government was es- 
tablished and is being now worked, so nowhere is such knowl- 
edge more essential than when one comes to speak of France. 
We shall see that Nature has given her many things favour- 
able to material prosperity and to immunity from external 
attack, while the course of her history has produced economic 
and social conditions which have profoundly influenced her 
political development. 

Let us begin by glancing briefly at the physical features 
of the country, and then examine more at length the his- 
torical antecedents which still affect the State and its govern- 
ment. 

France is naturally the richest of European countries, with 
everything needed to secure the well-being of an industrious 
people. 1 Nearly all the soil is available for cultivation, or 
for pasture, or for the growth of timber. There is plenty of 
coal and iron, chiefly in the north-east, fisheries on the coasts, 
a climate eminently fitted for cereals in the north and centre, 
and for vines in the centre and south, as well as for fruits and 
other less important agricultural products. The country is 
washed by three seas, giving admirable facilities for com- 
merce, and is guarded on the south and south-east by lofty 
mountains difficult to traverse. Only the north-eastern land 
frontier is exposed to attack and has most frequently suf- 
fered from it. The compactness of its territory, traversed by 
no ranges high enough to interfere with free communication, 
made Gaul appear to be one country even in the days of 
Julius Caesar, and has enabled its people to attain, despite 
differences of racial origin which survive in differences of 
language, a more complete national unity than exists in Ger- 
many or Italy or Spain. 2 

The wealth derived from the soil and from the indus- 
trious habits of the people gave France in the Middle Ages a 
place in commercial development hardly second to that of 
Italy. Prosperity brought in its train comforts and luxuries 
beyond those of her Teutonic neighbours to the north and 

i Russia has, of course, with her vast stretches of fertile land, a 
greater productive capacity, but less variety of products and a less 
genial climate. 

2 Breton is spoken in the north-west corner of Brittany and Basque 
in a still smaller area in the Western Pyrenees, as well as German in 
parts of Alsace. 

VOli. I P 



210 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE past n 

east. She rivalled Lombardy and Tuscany in the skill and 
taste of her artificers, qualities which have been so well main- 
tained that she continues to be the purveyor for the whole 
world of articles of beauty. The arable and vine or fruit- 
growing regions, well suited for petite culture, are very 
largely in the hands of small landowners, and both these and 
the tenant farmers have formed habits of thrift by which the 
pecuniary resources of the nation have been increased and 
pauperism kept within narrow limits. Though a large manu- 
facturing population has sprung up in the mining districts 
and great cities, the bulk of the nation is still agricultural, 
with the solid qualities and conservative instincts which 
everywhere belong to that class. A larger proportion of the 
total wealth of the country is to be found in the hands of men 
with small incomes than in any other great European or 
American country. 

Long as France has obeyed one government, there are 
marked difference between the races that compose the na- 
tion — Teutonic Flemings in the north-east with other Teu- 
tons on the eastern border, a strong infusion of Norse blood 
in Normandy, pure Celts still speaking a Celtic tongue in 
Brittany, Iberian and possibly Ligurian elements in the 
south. These differences, however, which are as marked as 
those between the races that inhabit the British Isles, cause 
no political dissensions, serving rather to give variety, and 
the richness that comes from the presence of diverse elements, 
to the people as a whole. This variety, noteworthy in the 
literature of France, is no less evident in French politics. 
Her statesmen show several types of character, two of .which 
are especially conspicuous, the man of the north or east, and 
the man of the south — the former more measured and cau- 
tious, the latter more impulsive and brilliant. These differ- 
ences, however conspicuous in their extreme forms, are less 
significant than the intellectual character and habits of feel- 
ing and acting which have now come to belong to the nation 
as a whole: quickness of intelligence, a gift for oratory and 
a sense of style, together with a susceptibility to emotion not 
incompatible with shrewdness and a conservative prudence 
in affairs. It was the French love of knowledge and aptness 
for speculation that made the schools of Paris foremost among 
the great universities of the Middle Ages, and led mediaeval 



chap, xvm LAND AND HISTORY 211 

writers to place in France the local home of Learning (Stu- 
dium), as they assigned Priesthood (Sacerdotium) to the 
Italians and Imperium to the Germans. 1 

The Antecedents and Development of Democracy 

In outlining the events and conditions that led up to the 
Revolution of 1789, when France made her first plunge into 
democracy, we need go no further back than the days of Louis 
the Fourteenth. Before the end of his reign France, already 
long conscious of her national unity, was thoroughly consoli- 
dated, and had become the most powerful as well as the most 
intellectually polished country in Europe, with by far the 
most brilliant court. Religious uniformity had been secured 
by the persecution or expulsion of the Calvinist Huguenots. 
Representative institutions had died out, for the ancient 
States-General had not met since 1614. As Louis himself 
said, the King was the State. No one talked of Liberty. 

The seventy years that followed brought no changes in the 
constitution, but a complete change in opinion and sentiment. 
Protestantism did not revive, but scepticism spread widely 
among the educated classes, and affected even the clergy. 
The despotic system of government began to be freely criti- 
cized, especially after Montesquieu had pointed to English 
institutions as fit to be imitated. It was ultimately dis- 
credited, first by the scandals of the court of Louis XV. and 
the careers of his successive ministers, then by the growing 
disorder of the finances. Liberal opinions became fashion- 
able. After the influence of the American Revolution, to 
which France lent her aid in 1778, had begun to tell on Eu- 
rope, they spread further and found fuller literary expression. 
The ancient monarchy, supported by the old noblesse, seemed 
to stand much as it had stood some centuries before, when 
feudalism was still a reality, but three changes of the utmost 
importance had in fact come to pass. One was the loss by 
the nobles of their local administrative powers and functions. 
These had been absorbed by the Crown, which ruled the 
country by a King's Council in Versailles, the most important 
member whereof was the Comptroller in whose hands all 

i In respect of the possession of the Papacy by Italy and of the Holy 
Roman Empire by the German kings. 



212 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE past n 



financial affairs lay, and by Intendants, officials administer- 
ing the provinces under the royal direction. The great land- 
owners, having lost political power and administrative func- 
tions, retained over the peasantry feudal rights, which ex- 
posed them to the hatred of that class, a large part of which, 
though still liable to the old imposts and exactions, were even 
then owners of the soil they tilled. There was in the rural 
districts little of a middle class between nobles and peasants. 
The bourgeoisie were socially separated from the nobility, but 
less sharply from the classes below them, though the richer 
sort looked down upon the peasants whom they sometimes ex- 
ploited, and who repaid them with suspicious dislike. It was 
the upper bourgeoisie, and especially the professional class 
among them, that supplied to the Crown its civil officials 
(other, of course, than the Court officials), so they managed 
to acquire plenty of real power and relieved their class from 
a good deal of taxation. Being by their attainments, their 
intellectual activity, and their education fully equal to the 
nobles, they felt their social disparagement all the more 
acutely. Thus in 1789 three political facts of the greatest 
moment had come into existence: (1) the centralization of all 
administrative as well as legislative authority in the King 
and his ministers, with a complete control of provincial as 
well as national affairs; (2) the arbitrary power of the Ad- 
ministration over the individual subject, who had no consti- 
tutional guarantees against its exercise; and (3) the antag- 
onism of the richer and the poorer classes — contempt of the 
nobles for the bourgeois, contempt of the bourgeois for the 
peasantry, a dislike of the peasant and the workman for all 
who stood above them in the social scale. There was little 
local self-government either to draw the inhabitants of a dis- 
trict together into common work, or to accustom them to the 
exercise of a limited and subordinate executive power. 

Then came the First Eevolution, the great and terrible, 
yet beneficent, revolution. It swept away the feudal rights 
of the nobles, never to reappear. It overthrew, and for a 
time proscribed, the Church, abolished all titles and other 
distinctions of rank, and divided France into new adminis- 
trative areas — the modern departments — cutting across and 
extinguishing the local life, enfeebled as it was, which had 
belonged to the old provinces. 






chap, xvin LAND AND HISTOKY 213 

In the seven turbulent years that succeeded the fall of the 
monarchy in 1792 there were, along with much destruction, 
some efforts, hasty and crude, to remodel the old or create 
new institutions. Systematic reconstruction came with Bona- 
parte, under whose strong hand a well-planned administration 
was erected on the foundations of the old regime, the cen- 
tralization of power being retained and rendered more ef- 
ficient, while the arbitrary power of the Crown, or its serv- 
ants, was replaced by a law simplified and reduced to uni- 
formity which, though it emanated from an autocracy, rec- 
ognized rights substantially the same for all subjects. The 
old Conseil du Eoi became the Conseil d'fitat, the old pro- 
vincial Intendant was turned into the Prefect of the depart- 
ment, taking his orders from the central government and 
carrying them out with the same free hand as before. 

When the Bourbon dynasty was re-established in 1814, the 
centralized administration and its arbitrary powers remained, 
and these have continued, though latterly somewhat reduced, 
down to the present day. This limited and quasi-constitu- 
tional monarchy of the Kestoration was overthrown in July 
1830 by the Second Revolution, the work of Paris rather than 
of France, which set up the monarchy of the House of Or- 
leans, more constitutionally liberal than its predecessor, but 
on a narrow electoral basis. Its overthrow in 1848 by 
another Parisian insurrection — the Third Revolution — 
brought in the Second Republic, which proclaimed universal 
suffrage, but itself perished at the hands of its President, who 
had been elected in December 1848 by an enormous popular 
vote, before there had been time either to create local self-gov- 
ernment or to provide guarantees for the freedom of the 
citizens. That President, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, who 
by the " plebiscite " of 1851 got his Presidential power pro- 
longed for ten years, succeeded by a second popular vote in 
turning it into the Second Bonapartean Empire, which was 
to be hereditary in his family. After he had been taken 
prisoner by the German army at Sedan in the war of 1870, 
a Republic, the Third, was nastily proclaimed by the legisr 
lative body then in existence. This fourth revolution ex- 
pressed the feelings of Paris, but it was not made by the 
French people. In the following year a new Assembly, 
elected by universal suffrage in order to conclude peace, 



214 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE paet n 

named Adolphe Thiers as " Chief of the Executive Power of 
the French Kepublic." * 

Through these three monarchies, from 1814 to 1870, the 
centralized administration, as reconstructed by Napoleon, con- 
tinued to exist, with the same autocratic powers. But the 
spirit of the First Bevolution (1789-99) persisted in large 
sections of the urban population, and after 1830 its tendencies 
became more socialistic and aggressive. They burst into 
flame in the insurrection of the Commune of Paris in 1871, 
just after the Germans had evacuated the city. 2 

The nomination of Thiers was, and was understood to be, 
a purely provisional arrangement, and it hardly ceased to be 
bo when the Assembly shortly afterwards elected him to be 
" President of the Republic." He did what he could, against 
the resistance of the monarchical majority in the Assembly, 
to secure the establishment of a republican form of govern- 
ment, and was aided by the successes of the Republicans at 
the elections that took place from time to time to fill vacancies 
in the Assembly. But the majority was still Monarchist, 
and its displeasure at his policy led them to overthrow him in 
1873. He was replaced by Marshal MacMahon, a Bona- 
partist soldier who had joined the supporters of the ancient 
Bourbon dynasty. Every one felt that a permanent consti- 
tution ought to be enacted, but the divisions of opinion offered 
great obstacles. Among the Monarchists there were three 
parties. The Legitimists, adherents of the Count de Cliam- 
bord (grandson of King Charles X.), who represented the 
elder branch of the House of Bourbon, were supported by 
the Church. The Orleanists pressed the claims of the Count 
of Paris, the grandson of King Louis Philippe, who, having 
in 1830 received the crown by a vote of the Assembly, had not 
asserted a title to rule by hereditary right. The Bonapartists 
sought to revive the Second Empire in the person of Louis 
Napoleon's son. These three sections, constituting the ma- 

i It would seem that the Assembly, in which there was a Monarchist 
majority, acquiesced in the use of the word " Republic," because they 
feared that if they proclaimed a monarchy forthwith, the monarch 
would have to bear the odium of signing the harsh treaty of peace which 
victorious Germany was imposing. See ch. i. of the Frcmce con- 
temporaire of M. Gabriel Hanotaux. 

2 The outline of events which occupies the next few pages seems needed 
to explain the parties that now exist in France and determine the char- 
acter of its government. 



chap, xvin LAND AND HISTORY 215 

jority of the Chamber, had combined to displace Thiers. 
But, apart from the personal jealousies that divided both 
them and the claimants they strove for, they represented 
different schools of political doctrine and purpose. The 
Orleanists were less reactionary and clerical than the Legiti- 
mists, the Bonapartists held to the Napoleonic tradition. 
Each pursued its own aims. A reconciliation was at last 
effected between the Count de Chambord, who was childless, 
and the Count of Paris, the latter waiving his claim since he 
became next in succession, but the former's subsequent re- 
fusal to accept the tricolor as the national flag, and his 
accompanying declaration of his extreme Divine Right prin- 
ciples, destroyed the chance of a Restoration. As was said 
at the time, " he lost the Crown of France for the sake of a 
bit of calico." 1 

Accordingly the Republicans prevailed through the dis- 
sensions of their adversaries. A republican Constitution 
was adopted in 1875, the decisive vote being carried by a 
majority of one, on an amendment to give to the head of the 
executive the title of " President of the Republic." The 
Monarchist parties did not, however, abandon hope. Presi- 
dent MacMahon, who had accepted in March 1876 a Moder- 
ate Republican (Left Centre) Ministry, was induced in 
1877 to dismiss it and summon some of the leading reaction- 
aries to form another. These bold men dissolved the Cham- 
ber, and ejected a large part of the administrative staff 
throughout the country, substituting their own partisans, but 
though prefects imposed restrictions on the press, putting 
more than the usual official pressure upon the electors, a 
large Republican majority was nevertheless returned. The 
President, an honest man and loyal to the Constitution, 
refused to attempt a coup d'etat, and after an attempt to hold 
on with a new Monarchist Ministry, called back the Moderate 
Republicans to form an administration. Fourteen months 
later the elections to the Senate having given a Republican 
majority in that body, he resigned office, and an eminent 
lawyer and politician, Jules Grevy, was chosen by the Cham- 
bers to fill his place. 

i There was a story current that Pope Pius IX., when he learnt of the 
failure of his hopes for monarchy in France (the Count of Chambord 
having insisted on the white flag of his House ) , remarked, " Et tout 
cela pour une serviette." 



216 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE part n 

Since the Constitution of 1875 was established, there has 
been no attempt to upset it by force. The Royalists, partly 
owing to their own divisions, partly through their blundering 
tactics, and partly also because the children of the Count of 
Paris were not attractive figures, lost ground in the country 
and in both Chambers. The death of Louis Napoleon's son 
(in the Zulu War of 1879) destroyed the hopes of the Bona- 
partists. 

Twice, however, has the republican form of government 
been threatened. At the elections of 1885 several causes 
had been tending to weaken the advanced Republican party, 
whose leaders formed the Ministry then in power. Gam- 
betta, their strongest man, had died in 1882. They were 
broken into two sections, and lost seats in consequence. Pres- 
ident Grevy, discredited by the corrupt practices of his son- 
in-law Wilson, resigned the presidency in 1887. A party of 
discontent, not professedly Monarchist but aided by Monar- 
chist funds, had grown up, and was advocating a revision of 
the Constitution for the purpose of strengthening the execu- 
tive power. It attached itself to a showy but essentially 
mediocre personality, General Boulanger, who had obtained 
some notoriety as Minister of War. Originally put forward 
by the Radical Republicans, he gained the support of the 
Clericals and of all who for various reasons disliked the 
parliamentary system, and during a few months was a public 
danger, for his adherents had, by carrying him as a candidate 
for the Chamber at a succession of by-elections in the more 
conservative parts of the country, made him seem a popular 
favourite. He even captured a seat in Paris. 1 Ultimately, 
however, a vigorous Minister got rid of him by procuring his 
arraignment before the Senate sitting as a High Court of 
Justice. Knowing that it would condemn him, he fled to 
Belgium, and shortly afterwards killed himself. But it was 
a narrow escape for the Republic, since he seems, hoping 
for the support of the army, to have contemplated a coup 
d'etat 

A few years later (1899-1902) the nation appeared to 

be drifting towards civil war. There had been for some time 

i The scrutin de liste system of election which had been introduced in 

1885 enabled him to stand for a whole Department. It was abolished 

in February 1889 in order to check this device, but has now been 



chap, xvin LAND AND HISTORY 217 

a notable revival of clerical activity, especially on the part 
of the religious Orders, for most of the parish clergy remained 
quiet. Pilgrimages were in fashion. A violent anti-Semitic 
agitation which had been originally directed against the great 
financial interests presently passed into politics. The Pan- 
ama scandals, in which some Jewish financiers had played a 
part and some Eepublican deputies were involved, had shaken 
public confidence in the Chamber. 

In 1894 a Jewish officer, Captain Dreyfus, was sentenced 
by court-martial to imprisonment for life on a charge of 
espionage and sent to Cayenne. In 1896 the question of his 
innocence was raised, and after a time became a political 
issue which convulsed France, the church and the army hold- 
ing Dreyfus to be guilty, while the Republicans, though 
many at first hesitated, ultimately espoused his cause. He 
was pardoned by the President in 1899, and subsequently 
acquitted by the highest court after a civil trial. Excitement 
had by this time subsided. Though there had been no 
armed conflict, a bitterness of feeling had been disclosed 
afresh which seemed to imperil the stability .of the Republic. 
In reviving the so-called " Nationalist " antagonism to the 
Parliamentary system, and in exasperating the anti-clerical 
Republicans, it led to the legislation disestablishing the 
Roman Catholic Church which, passed in 1902-5, was put 
into effect in 1906-7, encountering less resistance and creat- 
ing less disorder than had been feared. 

From the time when the restoration of the old monarchy 
ceased, because it had become hopeless, to be a real political 
issue, the relations of the Church to the State were the chief 
source of discord in France and made that discord passionate. 
The Church, which was exerting all its strength against the 
Republican party when Gambetta in 1877 uttered his famous 
phrase " Clericalism is the foe," continued monarchist at 
heart, and the more extreme Republicans regarded counter- 
attacks as the most effective form of defence. Education 
was the chief battle-ground, till the law of 1882, which made 
it compulsory, entrusted the elementary schools to lay teach- 
ers. Subsequently the Teaching Orders were dissolved by 
law. The course of the conflict was affected by the policy of 
the Vatican. Pope Leo XIIL, fearing for the fortunes of 
the Church, counselled a conciliatory attitude as early as 



218 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES: FRANCE paet n 

1885, and in 1892 directed good Catholics to support the 
existing regime, observing that " on any theory the civil 
power is of God." Many Monarchists obeyed, but anti- 
Semitism and the Dreyfus troubles accentuated the antago- 
nism, and it has continued to persist. 1 

In another way also religion and the Church told upon 
politics. When the risk of a monarchical restoration had 
disappeared, the Republican groups who had been united to 
oppose it began to fall apart. The more conservative section, 
described as the Left Centre, disapproving, some from re- 
ligious feeling, some from policy, of the campaign against 
the Church, drew off from the larger and more advanced 
division of the party. Their numbers continued to dwindle 
as time went on, while opinions of a socialistic type more and 
more prevailed in the urban electorate. Divisions among the 
Republicans continued to increase as the chances of a mon- 
archical restoration diminished, yet fear of the clergy sufficed 
to make the dominant sections hold together against the 
Church upon the main issues. 

In the evolution of opinion towards more advanced views, 
and also as a result of the growth of manufacturing industry 
and consequent increase of a working-class population, a new 
school of thought and a new political party arose which be- 
came a significant factor, especially after the defeat of the 
Clericals left it more free to play for its own hand against 
the Republican parties which it had been supporting. The- 
ories of the reconstruction of society on a communistic basis 
were scarcely heard of in the First Revolution, nearly all of 
whose leaders came from the bourgeoisie, and did not question 
the rights of property. 2 But at the Revolution of 1830 a 
Socialist party appeared among the working people, not 
definitely separating itself from other Republicans, but seek- 
ing to use a democratic republic as an engine for economic 
change. 

i Anti-religious reaction has been strongest in those countries of 
Europe and America where ecclesiastical power had been most fully 
dominant. It was a political misfortune for France when the Hugue- 
nots were crushed by Louis XIV. Many of them were educated and 
thoughtful men, imbued with a liberalism which France could ill spare. 

2 Baboeuf had proclaimed communistic doctrines during the First Rev- 
olution, but found little support for them. The National Assembly of 
1789 in its declaration of the Rights of Man recognizes Property as a 
primordial right, along with Liberty, Security, and Self-Defence. 



chap, xvm LAND AND HISTORY 219 

In 1848, when the Third Kevolution overthrew the Orleans 
monarchy, doctrines of this type had spread widely, and the 
subsequent Parisian insurrection of June in that year was 
largely the work of Socialists. The same element appeared 
again in the revolt of the Parisian Commune against the 
Assembly of 1871, though the direct aim of the Communards 
was not so much economic as the setting up of a practically 
independent local authority for Paris. Thereafter Socialist 
opinions continued to grow, and although the party was 
frequently rent by disputes, its sections often drew together 
again, and came to constitute a body powerful not only by 
its numbers but by its disciplined cohesion. They have suc- 
ceeded in obtaining from the Chambers much of the legisla- 
tion they desire. Though their voting strength comes from 
the wage-earning masses, most of their leaders belong to the 
bourgeois class and are highly educated men. They would 
constitute an even stronger force in politics but for the fact 
that the agricultural peasantry compose the majority of the 
French electorate, own the land, and have every motive for 
maintaining the right of private property. 

The general course of French political development from 
1789 till 1900 cannot be more tersely stated than in the words 
following, which I quote from the valuable book of M. Seig- 
nobos 1 (vol. i. of English translation, p. 224) : 

The political development of the nineteenth century has been 
a series of ebbs and flows, but the tendency has been towards 
Republicanism. By repeated seizures of the government and an 
agitation more and more effective, the democratic Republicans 
have finally conquered France. 

But the revolutions have been directed only to the structure of 
the central government and the possession of power. The social 
organization and the administrative mechanism have been pre- 
served without serious change. 

The democratic social organization, free from clerical control, 
established by the Revolution, was acceptable to the Republicans, 
and sufficiently popular to escape attack. The monarchical gov- 
ernments tried indirectly to revive the influence of the great land- 
owners, the middle class, and the clergy, but they did not touch 
any of the social institutions — peasant proprietorship, equal divi- 
sion of inheritances, civil equality, eligibility for public office 
without distinctions of birth, exclusion of clerical control: France 
has steadily preserved the social system of the Revolution. 

i Histovre politique de VEurope contempormne, 181^-1896. 



220 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE pabt n 

The centralized and bureaucratic administrative system has also 
remained nearly intact. All the parties, when in opposition, have 
declared it to be oppressive, but, on attaining office, have pre- 
served it as an instrument of power. Of the older Imperial regime 
France still retains: 

(a) The central administration with its ministers, the depart- 
mental administration with its prefects and sub-prefects, and its 
control over the communes; 

(b) The judicial organization with its body of court counsellors 
and its permanent judges, with its Ministry of Justice composed 
of advocates and prosecuting attorneys, with its antiquated and 
formal civil procedure and its secret inquisitorial criminal pro- 
cedure, with the Napoleonic code almost unchanged (the granting 
of divorce is only a return to an institution taken away in 1815). 

The survey I have given (necessarily brief and imperfect) 
of the conditions under which democracy was born in France, 
amid which it developed, and from which it has taken its 
colour, brings us to the point at which we may attempt to 
summarize the salient economic facts and the most potent in- 
tellectual and moral influences that were affecting the politi- 
cal life of the nation when the storm of war broke suddenly 
upon it in 1914. These conditions were: 

(a) In the economic sphere : 

In most parts of the country the land was in the hands 
of peasants who owned the soil they were tilling, who were 
intensely attached to its possession, and who shared with most 
(though not all) of the bourgeoisie an almost timorous con- 
servatism. 

Over against these conservative classes stood an industrial 
element, greatly increased during the last two generations, 
both in cities and in mining areas, which was largely perme- 
ated by socialistic ideas. 

(b) In the governmental sphere : 

Executive power remained highly centralized. The hand 
of the administration in Paris was felt everywhere. Local 
authorities had far narrower functions than in Britain or the 
United States, and the old provincial feeling which had 
given a certain local political and social life to the ancient 
divisions of the country, had, except in a few regions, al- 
most disappeared, not having transferred itself to the Depart- 
ments, artificial creations of the First Revolution. 

(c) In the social sphere: 



chap, xvin LAND AND HISTORY 221 

The influence of the old territorial aristocracy had van- 
ished, except in the West, and over most of the country the 
poorer classes were permeated by jealousy and suspicion 
towards the landowners. 

The old antagonism to the bourgeoisie of the poorer class, 
and especially of the town workers, continued, and had in 
many places become stronger with the growth of Socialism. 

The tradition of the First Revolution remained strong in 
a section of the bourgeoisie as well as in a much larger section 
of the masses, and was ready to break out when passion ran 
high, but the habit of resorting to force had declined as the 
practice of constitutional government became familiar, for 
there was now a prospect of winning by peaceful means what 
in the older generation had been sought by street emeutes 
and barricades. Paris, always the mother of revolutions, 
lost its predominance, and could no longer force the pace 
for the nation. Few of those who had fought for the Com- 
mune in 1871 remained to revive the angry memories of that 
day. A new danger was, however, revealed in the more 
frequent resort to strikes on a large scale, accompanied by 
maltreatment of non-strikers and the destruction of property. 
The disposition to obey public authority was still strong in 
the population generally. The coexistence of this submissive- 
ness with a proneness to violence, which, if noticeable chiefly 
in the less-educated class, is not confined to them, remains one 
of the curious phenomena of French character. 1 

Religious bitterness is intense. It is as strong in the 
enemies as in the friends of the Church, and is prone to 
express itself in petty persecutions which perpetuate them- 
selves by creating fresh resentments. 

Through all these changes of government and various 
forms of strife the French nation has remained intensely 
patriotic, united, when everything else tended to divide it, 
by its pride in France and its love of the sacred soil. It 
clung to the hope of recovering the provinces lost in 1871, 
and with scarcely a murmur accepted heavy taxation for 
military and naval purposes. It had become more pacific in 
sentiment towards the end of last century, and less was being 
heard of Alsace and Lorraine, when the aggressive attitude 
of its mighty eastern neighbour revived its martial spirit. 

1 Something similar has been observed in other peoples of Celtic stock. 



222 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES: FRANCE part ii 

Self-confidence had returned before the fateful day when that 
spirit came to be tested. 

We may now proceed to examine the Constitution and gov- 
ernment of the country, which have altered little in form, 
though considerably in methods, since 1875. 



CHAPTEK XIX 

THEl FRAME OF GOVERNMENT: PRESIDENT AND SENATE 

The Constitution of the French Republic is a Rigid one, 
distinguished from other laws by the fact that it is not 
changeable by ordinary legislation, but only by a special 
method to be hereafter described. In this it differs from the 
constitutions of the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Italy, 
Belgium, Holland, and the Scandinavian countries, for in all 
these countries the laws which regulate the structure and 
powers of government are not marked off from other statutes. 
It is not, however, set forth in a single instrument like the 
Rigid or Written Constitutions of the United States, Swit- 
zerland, Canada, Australia, and South Africa, but is con- 
tained in three Constitutional Laws. 

One of these (Feb. 1875), assuming the President of the 
Republic as an official then existing under a law of 1873, 
enacts the method of electing him and his functions, and the 
mode of amending the Constitution. Two others of 1875 
(one since partially repealed) deal with the legislature and 
the relations of the public powers, while two amending laws 
of 1884 introduce certain changes. The result of these enact- 
ments taken together is to create a legislature consisting of 
two Houses, a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies, who have 
the power (a) of electing, in joint session of both Houses, 
by an absolute majority, the President of the Republic, and 
(b) of changing the Constitutional Laws, not by the ordi- 
nary action of the legislature in each Chamber, but when 
sitting together in one body as a National Assembly. To 
enable them so to meet, each Chamber must have separately, 
either on its own motion or at the request of the President, 
declared, by an absolute majority, the need for a revision of 
those laws. 1 A later Constitutional Law (1884) provides 

i The procedure for amending the Constitution has been used twice 
only. 

223 



224 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES: FRANCE part n 

that " the principle of the government cannot be the object of 
a proposal of revision." * 

The provisions of the Constitution need not be set out 
in detail here, since they will appear in the description (to 
be hereafter given) of the Executive and Legislative organs. 
It is only matters relating to the structure and functions of 
the government that are dealt with in the Constitutional 
Laws. There are no broad declaration of political principles, 
such as appeared in the many earlier Constitutions of 
France, 2 no restrictions on the action of the legislature, 
nothing like what Americans call a Bill of Eights, guarantee- 
ing those elementary and inherent rights of the individual 
which no power in the State is permitted to infringe. Taken 
together, these Constitutional Laws constitute the shortest and 
simplest, the most practical and the least rhetorical, instru- 
ment of government that has ever been enacted in France. 
Moreover — and this is a point of special interest to those 
who insist upon the sovereignty of the People — the National 
Assembly which passed these enactments in 1875 had re- 
ceived no mandate or commission from the French electorate 
to do so. It had been elected hastily, during the continuance 
of the war of 1870-71, in order to create an authority legally 
capable of making peace with Germany. As there did not 
then exist any authority competent to prescribe a suffrage 
for the election, recourse was had to the suffrage established 
during the Second Eepublic (1848-1852) which had been 
overthrown by Louis Napoleon. Neither this Assembly of 
1871 nor any subsequent legislature has ever submitted for 
approval by a vote of the people the Constitutional Laws of 
1875, and the question of so submitting them has been seldom 
raised, no one knowing what the result of a submission might 
be. 

i I.e. that the presiding officer of an Assembly in which such a pro- 
posal is made cannot allow it to be discussed there. This law, though 
only negative, may be considered to be a provision of the Constitution 
meant to convey a solemn warning to any legislature invited to consider 
the abolition of the republican form of government. Were a legislature 
so disposed, it would of course begin by striking this provision out of 
the Constitution, and would then proceed to abolish the Republic just 
as if the provision had never existed. See as to a similar expedient 
in some ancient Greek republics, the Author's Studies in History and 
Jurisprudence, Essay III., pp. 205-207, of vol. i. of English Edition. 

2 See Chap. V. in Part I. 



chap, xix THE CONSTITUTION 225 

These features of the existing Constitution were due to 
those political conditions of 1875 which have been already 
described. In the one-chambered Legislature of that time 
the deputies who favoured a monarchical government and 
who had been hurriedly elected under the pressure of a 
terrible war, held a majority, but they were divided into 
three groups, Legitimists, Orleanists, and Bonapartists, cor- 
responding to the three monarchies that had ruled in France ; 
and each of these groups distrusted the others. Thus while 
the Republicans, though divided internally, were able to work 
together for some sort of republic, whatever character might 
subsequently be given to it, the Monarchist groups, each at- 
tached to one of several persons whose claims seemed irrecon- 
cilable, failed at the most critical moments to combine, and so 
drifted into a Republic which none of them desired. No 
party in the Chamber was strong enough to get all that it 
wanted : each had to consent to a compromise which it meant 
to be purely provisional. The more advanced Republicans 
acquiesced in a conservative Republic because they expected 
to change it in a radical direction. The Monarchists acqui- 
esced in a seven-year Presidency, called a Republic, because 
they hoped thereafter to turn the President into a King or an 
Emperor. 

The President 

The President of the Republic is elected for a term of 
seven years by the two Chambers of the legislature meeting 
in joint session. 1 He is re-eligible for any number of terms. 
He is the head of the Executive Government, and has there- 
with: 

The duty of executing the laws and power of proclaiming 
a state of siege. 

The supreme control of the Army and Navy. 

The conduct of foreign policy, through his right of negoti- 
ating treaties. Some of these, however, require legislative 

i The description which follows of the structure and functions of the 
organs of Government in France has been made somewhat full because 
the French system may probably be imitated in the new republics which 
are now (1919) springing up in Europe, the new constitutional mon- 
archies which were formerly in fashion having been discredited by the 
behaviour of the recently deposed kings who (or whose predecessors) 
had been given to rather than chosen by Greece and Bulgaria. 

VOL. I Q 



226 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES: FRANCE part ii 

sanction, and he cannot declare war without the consent of 
the Legislature. 

The power of appointing to all civil and military posts. 

The power to pardon offences. 

The function of representing the nation at all public 
ceremonies, and of presiding over them. 

The right, concurrently with members of the Chambers, 
of proposing laws. 

The power, with the consent of the Senate, of dissolving 
the Chamber of Deputies. 

The power to summon the Chambers to meet in extraor- 
dinary session, and invite them to proceed, in joint session, 
to a revision of the Constitutional Laws. 

The right of addressing messages to the Chambers. He 
cannot address them in person. Thiers had done so, but 
the Assembly, fearing the influence of his oratory, forbade 
this, and the prohibition has not been removed. 

The power to adjourn the Chambers for a month, but not 
more than twice within the same session. 

The power to require the Chambers to deliberate afresh 
upon a law they have passed. He has no veto. 

All these powers, except of course those of a ceremonial 
nature, are exercised by or through his ministers, by one of 
whom every one of his acts must be countersigned. He is 
personally irresponsible and not legally removable by a vote 
of the Chambers, though they can practically make it diffi- 
cult for him to retain office. But the Chamber of Deputies 
may accuse him of high treason, in which case he would be 
tried by the Senate, and would, if convicted, be deposed 
from office. Responsibility for executive acts done rests 
with his ministers, and it is to the Chambers, not to him, 
that they are responsible. 

The position of the President in France is therefore en- 
tirely unlike that of the President of the United States. 
As the latter's title to power comes direct from the people 
who have elected him, he is independent of the legislature, 
and able to resist it. His ministers are his servants, re- 
sponsible to and dismissible by him, and not responsible to 
Congress. Neither does the President of the Swiss Con- 
federation come into comparison, for he is merely the Chair- 
man of an Executive Council of seven ministers, with no 



chap, xix THE PKESIDENT 227 

more power than his colleagues. The real parallel is to be 
found in the Constitutional king of such countries as Italy, 
Britain, Holland, or Norway. In these countries the King 
reigns but does not govern, being the titular head of the State 
in whose name executive acts are done, while it is his min- 
isters who are in fact responsible for them to the sovereign 
legislature. The French President is thus a monarch elected 
for seven years, but a monarch who has great dignity with 
slight responsibility and hardly any personal power. Of 
several rights vested in him little use has been made. Mes- 
sages are rarely sent, not even at the opening and closing of a 
Parliamentary session. Only once has the Chamber been 
dissolved before the end of its natural term. The right of 
proroguing for a month has never been exercised, nor has that 
of calling on the Chambers to reconsider a Bill. 

Two functions, however, there are, one of which he must 
fulfil without the intervention of his ministers, and the other 
of which has to be exercised upon the ministers themselves. 
The first is the selection of the person who is to be commis- 
sioned to form a ministry. When a Cabinet is defeated in 
the legislature and resigns, it is the President's duty to in- 
vite a leading deputy or senator to form a new administra- 
tion. Custom prescribes that the President should first con- 
sult the President of the Senate and the President of the 
Chamber, because the aim in view is to secure a Prime Min- 
ister whom the legislature will be likely to support, and the 
chairmen of the two Houses are the persons best qualified to 
advise him on that subject. Heads of " groups," as well as 
other politicians of less mark, frequently call upon him to 
proffer their advice, but he need not regard it. 

As regards the composition of the ministry his rights are 
less clear. There is nothing to prevent him from advising 
the person whom he selects to be President of the Council 
(Prime Minister) as to the men who are more or less fit, or 
unfit, to be invited to join the Cabinet; but, on the other 
hand, there is nothing to oblige the incoming Prime Minister 
to follow the advice given. As a rule, the President inter- 
feres very little, and he is certainly not held responsible for 
the structure of the ministry. The procedure is much the 
same as that followed in similar cases in England, where the 
Sovereign usually confines himself to sending for the states- 



228 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES: FRANCE pabt n 

man whom he asks to form the Government, though it some- 
times happens that he expresses a wish that some particular 
person should be included. The matter is simpler in Eng- 
land, where there have been, till recently, only two great 
parties, so that when a ministry containing the leaders of one 
of these has been overset, the choice of the Crown naturally 
falls on the leader (or one among the leaders) of the other; 
whereas in France there are in the Chamber many parties 
or groups, sometimes of nearly equal strength, and none com- 
manding a majority of the whole body. 

The other function of the President is that of advising his 
ministers in their conduct of public business. Being legally 
entitled to call for information as to all that passes in every 
public department, and especially in that of foreign affairs, 
he is able to advise, and has opportunities of expressing to 
his ministers his view on any subject. He thus holds a. posi- 
tion between that of the British King, who reigns but does 
not govern, and that of the American President, who governs 
as well as reigns, but only for four years. There are two 
kinds of Ministerial meetings. One is the Cabinet Council 
(Conseil de Cabinet) held usually once a week, with the 
Prime Minister in the chair, to consider questions of current 
policy. It is like a British Cabinet. The other is the Coun- 
cil of Ministers (Conseil des Ministres) , usually held twice or 
thrice a week with the President of the Eepublic in the chair. 
In it large political questions, including (besides matters 
purely formal) the measures needed to carry out the decisions 
of the Cabinet Council, are debated and determined. It is 
like an American Cabinet, save that in the latter the Presi- 
dent can do what he likes, his Ministers being merely his con- 
fidential advisers. 

What is the exact amount of power or influence which a 
French President exerts is an arcanum imperii which con- 
stitutional usage forbids either him or his ministers to dis- 
close. The personal character of a President, his intellectual 
gifts, experience, and force of will make a difference in each 
particular case. Walter Bagehot, the most penetrating of 
British constitutional writers, indicated sixty years ago the 
value which the criticisms and counsels of a capable and ex- 
perienced Sovereign, standing high above the strife of par- 
ties, might possess for his ministers. These counsels are in 



chap, xix THE PEESIDENT 229 

England not often given, and not always followed when 
given, — they carry of course no legal weight — but an in- 
stance is still remembered when they proved valuable. 1 One 
can well believe that the advice of the President might be 
similarly useful in France, but there are two important dif- 
ferences. In France the President has always been a party 
leader, and may conceivably become one again ; and the posi- 
tion he occupies, being less exalted in rank than that of a 
hereditary monarch, does not command so much formal def- 
erence. Advice from the President might therefore be less 
well received, and any influence exerted by him might be re- 
sented, not only by his ministers (who are said to be some- 
times jealous even to the point of withholding information) 
but by the Chambers to which they are responsible. On the 
other hand, the President is sure to possess wide political 
experience, and is likely to be in general accord with his 
Cabinet, since he probably belongs to some section of the Left 
or Left Centre, as have all ministries since 1879. The 
Cabinet is usually what is called a Cabinet de concentration, 
i.e. one composed of the leading men drawn from various 
Left " groups," so that the co-operation between " groups " 
which Cabinets naturally aim at securing can be profitably 
assisted and prolonged by the influence of the President, ju- 
diciously exerted to avert breaches by which the Cabinet 
might fall. Taking all these things together, one may say 
that the Executive plays a useful and indeed indispensable 
part. Presidents prudently efface themselves in domestic 
matters, and, though believed to have occasionally proved 
helpful in questions of foreign relations, they have, so far as 
concerns the public, kept silence even from good words. 

The election of a President, being in the hands of the 
Chambers and not of the people, and seldom having first-rate 
political importance, is usually carried through quickly and 
quietly, and excites no great interest in the nation at large. 
It is sometimes settled in a preliminary gathering of the 
" groups " belonging to the Left (a name used to denote the 
more " advanced " parties), which thus becomes what Amer- 
icans call a " congressional caucus." Every Frenchman, ex- 
cept members of families that have reigned, is eligible for the 

i On the occasion of a despatch addressed in 1861 to the United States 
Government regarding the Trent affair. 



230 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE pabt ii 

Presidency, but the persons chosen have, since Marshal Mac- 
Mahon, been all Parliamentary leaders and most of them 
former Prime Ministers, so their characters are well known 
to those who exercise the choice. 1 All have been men of high 
personal character, stained by no scandal. One only, Jules 
Grevy, was re-elected, but he resigned early in his second 
term in consequence of the malpractices of his son-in-law. 
Another (Casimir Perier) resigned in resentment at the 
vituperative attacks made by a section of the press on him 
and on the administration of the public services, against 
which (as he thought) the Chambers did not sufficiently pro- 
tect him. Ten years later he expressed, in a letter to a news- 
paper upon a question which had arisen in the Senate regard- 
ing the powers of the Presidency, the view that the President 
of the Republic had no power which he could exert freely 
and personally except that of presiding at solemnites nation- 
ales. This notwithstanding, the dignity of the office is such 
that politicians of the first rank gladly accept it. 

The constant recurrence in France of public ceremonial 
occasions of all kinds, and the value set upon the appearance 
of the Head of the State on such occasions, especially in the 
provinces, give him plenty to do, and enable him to feel that 
he is rendering real service to the country. That service is 
specially valuable when he happens to possess the dignity and 
affability which make his presence impressive or winning. 
He is an indispensable part of the constitutional machinery, 
for he represents the unity of the nation and the permanence 
of the executive power. In the words of Tocqueville, spoken 
long before the emergence of the Third Republic, " la grande 
ombre du peuple plane sur lui." 

There are those in France who would like to turn the 
Presidency to fuller practical account as a motive force. It 
ought, they hold, to be real as well as ornamental, a power 
which could do something to guide the people and do much 
to restrain the legislature. This school of thinkers appeals 
to the principle, recognized in every French Constitution, of 
the separation of the legislative and executive powers, arguing 
that the predominance, which they call despotism, now ex- 

i Here may be noted another contrast with the United States, where 
out of the Presidents chosen since Lincoln only four had sat in either 
House of Congress. 






chap, xix THE PEESIDENT 231 

erted by the legislature violates that principle, producing 
weakness and instability in the conduct of affairs. The op- 
position this view encounters springs from the distrust and 
fear of an Executive Head which, long deep-rooted in the 
French mind, became intense during the rule of Louis Na- 
poleon, who had abused his Presidential office to effect the 
coup d'etat of December 1851. How, moreover, could the 
exercise of personal power by the President be reconciled 
with the provision of the Constitution which requires all his 
acts to be countersigned by a minister % An irremovable and 
irresponsible President cannot impose upon his ministers re- 
sponsibility for acts which are his and not theirs, any more 
than they can lay on him the blame for acts which are theirs 
and not his. It is not merely because he is not chosen di- 
rectly by the people that a French President has less author- 
ity than his American analogue, but rather because the Con- 
stitution-makers desired an executive figurehead which, 
standing in exalted dignity above the ebbs and flows of demo- 
cratic sentiment, should not enjoy a power that might tempt 
him to overthrow democracy itself. Responsibility to the 
people cannot well be divided : it must rest either, as in Eng- 
land, with the Ministry, or, as in the United States, with the 
Executive Head. 

Nevertheless, as will presently appear, discontent with the 
inconstancy and excitability of the Chamber of Deputies has 
created a wish, frequently asserting itself, to have a strong 
Executive and entrust him with a veto power. Those who 
call for a revision of the Constitution have this chiefly in their 
mind. That a President should be encouraged to advise his 
ministers more than he is known to do, and that they should 
give more heed to his advice, would not satisfy this party, 
which desires something much nearer to the American than 
to the British system, and holds that such a President, espe- 
cially if elected by the people, would be well suited to a demo- 
cratic country. 

The Senate; 

The provisions which determine the structure and powers 
of the Senate were originally included in the Constitution of 
1875 ; but a Constitutional amendment of 1884 took them out 



232 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE part ii 

of the category of " Constitutional Laws " and placed them 
in that of those " Organic Laws " which can be altered in the 
same manner as all other laws by the ordinary action of the 
two Chambers. This does not in effect make them more 
easily changed, because when the two Houses agree to pro- 
ceed together, as a National Assembly, to a revision of the 
Constitutional Laws, the Senate, having only three hundred 
members against the six hundred of the Chamber of Deputies, 
is liable to be outvoted, whereas when other laws come up to 
it in the regular course, it has a full power of rejection, and 
is unlikely, being interested in its own prerogatives, to ac- 
cept proposals which would reduce them. 

By the Organic Law of December 9, 18S4 (which is still 
in force), the Senate consisted of 300 members elected in 
the eighty-six departments of France, in Algeria, in the Ter- 
ritory of Bclfort, and in the Colonies, by Electoral Colleges, 
whose members have all been elected by universal suffrage. 
To these there have been added 14 for Alsace-Lorraine, mak- 
ing 314 senators in all. The Colleges consist of: 

(a) The Deputies of the department. 

(b) The members of the General Council of the depart- 
ment (Conseil General). 

(c) The members of the District Council (Conseils d'Ar- 
rondissemeni) within each department. 

(d) Delegates chosen by the communes within each depart- 
ment, the larger communes being represented by a larger, the 
smaller by a smaller number of delegates. 1 

The Commune of Paris has 30 delegates, some few other 
large cities 24, while the large majority of the rural com- 
munes, often very small, have one each. Even so, the dis- 
proportion of delegates to population is startling. A. great 
city like Lyons or Lille, for instance, may have no more dele- 
gates than a number of petty rural communes with a far 
smaller population. It therefore does not represent the peo- 
ple on a basis strictly proportioned to population, though it 
approaches that basis much more nearly than do the American 
and Australian Senates, where every State, large or small, is 
equally represented. The reason for this deviation from 

i The Commune is in France the unit of local government in town 
as in country. It is a municipality presided over by a Mayor (Maire) 
whatever its size, from great Paris down to a hamlet in an Alpine 
valley. 



chap, xix THE SENATE 233 

democratic principle was the desire to give to the Electoral 
Colleges that conservative character which was expected to 
belong to the rural and especially the agricultural population ; 
and the laws of 1884 reduced this rural predominance chiefly 
by assigning a larger number of delegates to the small towns, 
in order to give a stronger representation to the bourgeois 
element which now dominates them, while the rural commune 
is in some regions under the influence of the local land- 
owner. 

In the voting of the Electoral College of each department 
a majority of all the votes cast is required at the first two bal- 
lots for the election of a Senator, but on the third ballot a 
plurality cast for a candidate is sufficient. Voting is obli- 
gatory. The expenses of the delegates who have to travel to 
the capital of the department for the voting are paid out of 
public funds (if asked for, as they always are), and are 
estimated to cost, at each triennial election, about 900,000 
francs (£36,000, $180,000). 

The number of Senators returned from each department 
varies from two to ten, according to population, the Algerian 
departments and the Colonies having only one each. A Sen- 
ator's term of office is nine years. The Senate is a perma- 
nent body, never dissolved as a whole, but renewed by one- 
third every third year, the departments being arranged in 
three sets, each set holding an election at one of the three 
fixed dates. Eligibility for the Senate begins at the age of 
forty. No' other qualification, not even that of residence, is 
required ; but in practice a person is not likely to be chosen 
unless he be connected with the department, either by origin 
or by residence. 

The legislative powers of the Senate are equal to those of 
the Chamber of Deputies except as regards financial Bills. 
These must originate in the Chamber, but when they reach 
the Senate it can amend them by way of rejecting or reduc- 
ing items in taxation or appropriation. Whether it can also 
increase the expenditure proposed except by reinstating items 
which, proposed by the Ministry, the Chambers had struck 
out, is matter of controversy. It has sometimes done so, 
but the Chamber usually protests, and the Senate, knowing 
its case to be weak, usually yields. 

It has also two special powers. One is to give or with- 



234 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE part ii 

hold its consent to a dissolution of the Chamber of Deputies 
by the President before the legal time for the election of a 
new Chamber has arrived. This power has been exercised 
only once, in 1877. The other is to sit as a High Court of 
Justice when summoned to do so by the President of the 
Republic, for the trial of grave offences against the State. It 
has sat twice for this purpose. No special functions in con- 
nection with foreign affairs or with appointments (such as 
belong to the Senate of the United States) have been assigned 
to it. 

The Senate in its actual Working. — When the Constitu- 
tion was being formed, the more advanced Republicans pre- 
ferred a single chamber system, such as had existed in the 
short-lived Second Republic of 1848-1852. But the Mon- 
archist sections, and most of the moderate Republicans, in- 
sisted on having a body calculated to give stability, and would 
hardly have accepted universal suffrage without the check of 
another Chamber. Gambetta, eager to have a republic at 
once, acquiesced. Thus, after long discussions, in which 
nearly every possible way of creating an Upper House was 
considered, the example of the United States caused the elec- 
tion of three-fourths of the Senators to be vested in local 
authorities, while the selection of the remaining fourth was 
assigned to the National Assembly, which was to nominate 
them before it disappeared, subsequent vacancies among the 
nominees being left to be filled up by the Senate itself. 
This fourth were to sit for life. Indirect election, though 
suggested by the wish to have a comparatively conservative 
Assembly, was justified as giving a representation of the 
people not merely by numbers but by local social groups, each 
of which had a common interest and so a collective opinion. 
The idea was in so far a good one that it brought in many 
men of personal distinction, who gave lustre to the body in the 
eyes of the nation and helped to form in its members habits 
of decorum and gravity as well as to set a high intellectual 
standard in its debates. Of these nominated Senators and 
their co-opted successors the last died in 1918. The extinc- 
tion of the class in 1884 was due, not to any complaints made 
against them, but to democratic theory, which disapproved of 
life tenure and demanded a popular, even if indirect, elec- 
tion. The present system works smoothly and is criticized 



chap, xix THE SENATE 235 

by those only who object to Second Chambers altogether. 
NTot much public interest is aroused either in the choice of 
delegates — the Maire is usually chosen in rural communes 
— or in the voting when it takes place in the Electoral Col- 
leges. Although the delegates of the smaller communes still 
constitute almost everywhere a large majority in these Col- 
leges, it is not they but usually the deputies and members of 
the Conseil General who put forward and carry candidates. 
Nearly all the electing delegates belong to the so-called bour- 
geois class, i.e. they are neither nobles of ancient lineage nor 
working-men. Voting goes mostly on party lines, yet local 
connections and local influence count for much. The same 
local party committees which we shall find concerned with 
elections to the Chamber are at work here also. Bribery is 
rare, but it is alleged that the influence of the Prefect tells 
upon the delegates of the communes, which have (as will be 
seen presently) much to expect from his favour, the Prefect 
being usually the instrument through which the central ad- 
ministration works its will. The bulk of the Senators have 
of late years been professional men, chiefly physicians and 
lawyers, with a few agriculturists. The higher walks of com- 
merce, landed property, and industry are not largely repre- 
sented. Few men begin their political career in the Senate. 
Many have been deputies, who seek in their advancing years 
an easier life than falls to the lot of one who has to court a 
quadrennial re-election; many have been leading members 
of the Conseil General or possibly of the Conseil d 'Arron- 
dissement. Thus nearly all come in with some measure of 
political training. The character of the Senators differs 
from that of the deputies chiefly in the fact that they are 
older, have had a longer experience, and are on the average 
rather better off. They keep in a touch with their constitu- 
encies which need not be quite so close as that of the Deputy, 
since he sits for four years only, the Senator for nine. 

Most of the numerous parties into which French poli- 
ticians are divided are represented in the Senate, but the 
extremes at both ends, Monarchists and Socialists, are rela- 
tively weaker than in the Chamber, for there are few depart- 
ments in which either of those parties could carry an Elec- 
toral College. So also the smaller " groups " or subdivisions 
of the chief parties, which we shall find in the Chamber are 



236 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES: FRANCE part ii 

less well marked — some indeed scarcely exist — in the 
Senate. Partisanship is less pronounced, the temperature 
lower, outbursts of passion unusual. The general character 
of opinion, which used to be Conservative Republican or 
what the French call " Left Centre," has become, since the 
end of last century, more anti-clerical and generally Radical, 
but Radical in a strongly Republican rather than in a So- 
cialist sense. Averse to constitutional change, not directly 
amenable to popular pressure, disposed to support authority 
and to maintain a continuity in policy, it examines proposals 
by the light of experience and good sense rather than by 
their conformity to democratic theory. Its members, mostly 
bourgeois, and largely rural bourgeois, represent and value 
respectability. Being often men of local consequence, they 
know their departments well, but are less occupied than the 
deputies with local patronage, so that their labours are lighter. 
They are also somewhat more independent of party ties and 
party leadership. Few are re-elected more than once. Oc- 
cupying apartments in the fine old palace of the Luxembourg, 
more than two miles distant from the Palais Bourbon where 
the Chamber is lodged, they see less of its members than the 
Lords see of the Commons in London or the Senators see of 
the Representatives in Washington. 

The relations of the Senate to the Chamber are determined 
by its powers, which are weaker in fact than they seem on 
paper. Subordination in the realm of finance debars it 
from controlling the Executive, though it has twice caused 
the fall of ministries, in one instance, however, because the 
ministry wished to fall, as the Chamber did not rally to its 
support. Since it is only in the second degree the creation 
of universal suffrage, its claim to express the will of the 
people is less strong. Thus, while feeling the natural and in- 
evitable jealousy of a Second Chamber towards a First Cham- 
ber, it recognizes its own inferiority and seldom challenges 
its rival to a duel. Not venturing to stem the current that 
runs strongly towards democracy, it has accepted a position 
inferior to that for which it was designed. But though it 
has less force, it has more finesse. Its expert parliamen- 
tarians, many of whom are familiar with the Chamber in its 
ways and its weaknesses, know when the latter can be suc- 
cessfully resisted, and choose their battle-ground with skill. 



chap, xix THE SENATE 237 

When the Chamber seems seriously interested in a Bill, or 
when the ministry intimate that they are resolved to press 
it, having public opinion behind them, the Senate gives way, 
curbing its own repugnance. When, on the other hand, it 
thinks that the Chamber will be absorbed by other objects, 
or has passed the Bill only in deference to momentary clam- 
our, it quietly shelves the measure, or proceeds to amend it in 
a leisurely way, returning it to the deputies after their zeal 
has cooled down and popular interest has subsided. Thus 
many bad bills are slowly killed, sometimes after having gone 
twice or thrice backwards and forwards between the Houses. 
These tactics are least successful in the case of financial pro- 
posals, because the Chamber, perhaps of set purpose, fre- 
quently from its methods of business, which are alternately 
dilatory and precipitate, often keeps back the Budget of the 
year till the latest possible moment, so as to leave the Senate 
no time for consideration and amendment unless it assumes 
the responsibility of driving the Ministry to a provisional 
levy of taxation needing to be subsequently confirmed. This 
habit of ousting the Senate from the financial control which 
the Constitution meant to entrust to it is the more regrettable 
because finance is a subject which the Senate understands. 
The reports of its Commissions on the Budget are always 
careful and usually sound, but they have little effect in 
checking either the extravagance or the fiscal errors of the 
deputies. 

Ordinary Bills seldom originate in the Senate, whose best 
work is done in the way of revising, both in substance and in 
form, measures brought to it from the Chamber. It is so 
assiduous and competent in this function that the Chamber 
is said to pass not a few demagogic Bills in the hope that 
the Senate will eliminate their worst features. Its dislike 
of State-Socialism has sometimes induced it to discourage 
legislation designed to improve the conditions of labour. It 
hated, but it feared to reject, the Bill for the purchase by the 
State of the Western Railway, and long stood out against an 
income-tax, the bete noir of capitalists and of the richer class 
generally. 

The only method provided for settling controversies be- 
tween the Senate and the Chamber is that of a conference be- 
tween two " Commissions," one appointed by each House, 



238 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES: FRANCE pakt ii 

these two bodies debating together but voting separately. If 
this method, seldom resorted to, fails to bring about agree- 
ment or to effect a compromise which each Chamber ratines 
by its vote, nothing further can be done, for there exists no 
Referendum for ascertaining the opinion of the people. 
Should the Chamber persist in its own view, that view will 
be likely to prevail, especially if there be evidence that the 
popular House has the people behind it. 

Though it is from among the deputies that most members 
of French Cabinets come, there are usually three or four 
taken from the Senate, and these distinguished men, per- 
haps Prime Ministers. Veterans of renown seek its less 
troubled and turbid waters. Instead of the atmosphere of 
strife in which the larger House lives, and which makes its 
debates exciting, there reigns in the Senate a sedate and 
sometimes almost languid tranquillity befitting the compara- 
tively advanced age of its members. 1 Some critics say it 
has the obsolete air of a theatre de la rive gauche,, or describe 
it by terms corresponding to the American " side show," be- 
cause it wants the vivacity of the Chamber, and draws far 
less of the attention of the nation. Nevertheless the position 
of a Senator is coveted, and his authority considerable. The 
level of the discussions is well maintained, not only as re- 
spects matter but also in the form and diction of the speeches. 
Brilliant oratory has been rare, but no other legislative body 
has in modern times shown a higher average standard of abil- 
ity and knowledge among its members. 

Devotees of the doctrine of absolute popular sovereignty 
through universal suffrage still demand the abolition of the 
Senate. It incurs some unpopularity by stifling, or cutting 
down, Bills which the Chamber lightly passes at the bidding 
of some section of opinion, and so comes to be denounced as 
reactionary. But it excites no very general hostility, and is 
indeed valued by most thoughtful men. It had once the 
honour of saving the Republic. When in 1888 General Bou- 
langer and his partisans were trying to force a general elec- 
tion of the Chamber likely to result in giving him the sup- 
port he needed for his grasp at power, the refusal which it 
became known would proceed from the Senate to any request 
i The average age of Senators is sixty-three. 






chap, xix THE SENATE 239 

for a dissolution checkmated the scheme. 1 This service gave 
the Upper Chamber a claim, not jet forgotten, to the support 
of good Republicans. Appearances indicate that it will hold 
its ground; and this appears to be the hope of the most re- 
flective minds in nearly every party. Gambetta, who had 
rather reluctantly accepted it in 1875, said some years later 
that a bicameral system was a " principe constitutif de tout 
gouvernement parlementaire, et encore, malgre les errements 
anterieurs, principe constitutif de tout gouvernement demo- 
cratique." Stable in its composition and habits, it forms a 
counterpoise to the haste and volatility of the more popular 
Chamber. Its half-century of life has not entirely fulfilled 
the hopes of those who created it, for the faults of what the 
French call Parliamentarism have been only mitigated and 
not restrained. Of the intellectual lights that adorned its 
earlier years none are left now burning, and those who have 
replaced them seem less brilliant. There are some who 
think it might have shown more courage in resisting the rash 
action of the Chamber, and made itself more representative 
of the sober and cautious elements in the nation. But the 
astute statesmen who lead the Senate may be credited with 
knowing their own business. They prefer the power of fre- 
quently securing delay and obtaining compromises to the risks 
which a bolder attitude of opposition would involve. A stage 
is provided from which a man kept out of the popular Cham- 
ber by his temperament, or advancing years, or aversion to 
the methods by which constituencies are captured and held, 
may address his fellow-citizens, establish a reputation, and 
serve the people not only by improving the quality of legisla- 
tion but by discussing large issues with less risk of ruining 
his prospects than might deter a deputy from trying to stem 
the tide of temporary passion. Thus most even of persons 
opposed in theory to a bicameral scheme, as well as all of 
those who would like the Senate to show more boldness, are 
agreed in holding that it has justified its existence. Things 
would have been worse without it. 

ilt subsequently, as a High Court of Justice, found him guilty of 
high treason, he having fled from France. 



CHAPTER XX 



THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES 



Of the laws which regulate the election and powers of the 
Chamber, those only which provide for its election by man- 
hood suffrage, and determine its relations to the President 
and the Senate, form a part of the Constitution. Ordinary 
laws have supplied the rest, directing that the Chamber is to 
be elected for four years, and fixing its number, which is at 
present 626, of whom 24 represent Alsace-Lorraine, while 6 
come from Algiers and 10 from various colonies. The nor- 
mal electoral area had been, since 1889, the Arrondissement, 
a division of the Department for local administrative pur- 
poses ; but now the Department has been substituted, the vot- 
ing for the numerous candidates being by a form of propor- 
tional representation tried for the first time in 1919. Under 
this new plan, however, the strength of each party in the 
Chamber does not exactly represent the strength of the par- 
ties in the nation. It was adopted as a compromise between 
the opponents of proportional representation and those of its 
advocates who desired to see their principle more boldly ap- 
plied, and the latter think it has not gone far enough. Regis- 
tration is performed by the local authorities. They have 
been known to falsify the register, but this is not common 
enough to be a serious evil. A man with more than one 
place of residence can choose at which he will vote, no one 
being permitted to vote in more than one area whether for 
the Chamber or for local purposes. 

France has tried many electoral experiments in the ar- 
rangement of constituencies. Three times she established the 
system of making the larger area of the department the elec- 
toral division, assigning to each department a number of seats 
based on its population, for all of which the voting took place 
together on one list, with a second balloting where no candi- 
date obtained an absolute majority. This plan is called the 

240 



chap, xx THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES 241 

Scrutin de liste. Three times this method was dropped and 
replaced by the Scrutin d' arrondissement (the scheme of one- 
membered constituencies) . ISTow the Scrutin de liste has re- 
turned once more. Gambetta, among others, supposed that 
the larger electoral area would tend to raise the quality of 
candidates and diminish the power of local cliques and wire- 
pullers, but this did not prove to be the case. Whether it 
will do so now remains to be seen. 1 

The election arrangements are comparatively simple and 
inexpensive, and in rural areas the polling-places are nu- 
merous, there being one in every commune. It is usually 
the hall of the Mairie. Polling always takes place on a Sun- 
day. The machinery of the polling and counting are a pub- 
lic charge, nor is there any legal maximum fixed for the can- 
didates' expenses. Voting is by ballot, supposed to be secret, 
but in the rural communes the Maire can usually see how 
the peasant votes, and the peasant generally believes that his 
vote is known to the priest, the school teacher, and the land- 
lord. Election frauds are not very frequent, though some- 
times gross. They generally take the form of dropping into 
the ballot-box, probably with the collusion of the presiding 
officer, two or three extra voting papers concealed within the 
single paper which the voter hands to that functionary. 
Pleasant anecdotes are told of the way in which these things 
are sometimes done in southern France. On one occasion the 
clerk of the Maire, finding that the votes given were not suf- 
ficient to elect the candidate desired, remarked to his sub- 
ordinate, " It is for you to complete the work of universal 
suffrage." Disturbances sometimes occur in which the bal- 
lot-boxes are seized by a group of rowdies, carried off and 
tampered with, but this is rare, and seems to be known only 
in the hot-headed south. 

Bribery is sporadic, thought necessary in some places be- 
cause otherwise the voters will not come up, and in other 
places useless because it would make no difference to the 
result. It seems less frequent than it was in England be- 
fore the Corrupt Practices Act of 1882, or is now in some 
parts of the United States and Canada. Sometimes men de- 
fend or excuse it as a counterpoise to the exercise of undue 

1 In the election of 1919 out of 626 seats all but 50 were filled on the 
first balloting. For these a second balloting took place. 

VOL. I R 



242 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FKANCE pabt ii 

influence by officials or (formerly) by ministers of religion. 
" Treating/' which is delicately described as " libations at 
the expense of the candidate," is infrequent, though the vil- 
lage cabaret is usually the meeting-place of political commit- 
tees. An experienced friend told me that illicit expenditure 
could hardly be a growing evil, for the tendency had of late 
years been to an increase of the votes given for candidates of 
advanced opinions, who are nearly all poor men, unable to 
spend money on elections, and receiving little or no help 
from party funds. 1 Neither is there now in most parts of 
France any intimidation worth regarding by employers or 
landowners, though meetings are sometimes broken up and 
the polls disturbed by the violent opponents of a candidate. 
There are districts, however, especially in the west, where the 
landlord does exert influence on the tenant, and the master 
on the workman, and the priest on the parishioner. 2 Clerical 
persuasion no longer takes illegitimate forms. The force 
that may seriously pervert elections is the quiet pressure of 
local functionaries under the direction of their superiors or 
at the bidding of the sitting deputy. 3 Though there are not 
to-day any " official candidatures," such as those which were 
shamelessly practised under the Second Empire and revived 
under the Monarchist ministry of 1877, it is common for 
public functionaries or employees, from the Prefect of the 
department down to the local gendarme or road-mender, to 
do what each can to further the election of the person whom 
the ministry in power approves. There is much less pres- 
sure on individual voters than there was in Louis Napoleon's 
days, but the district or the commune is made to understand 
the wishes of the Government and led to expect favours from 
it in the way of expenditure upon local public works, from 
a parish pump up to a bridge or a town hall. As Parliamen- 
tary majorities are fluctuating, so that every vote in the 
Chamber becomes of consequence to ministers, the latter exert 

i The great banks and financial companies are said to subscribe to the 
funds of some of the parties, but apparently not to such an extent as 
that which led to the legal prohibition in the United States of such 
contributions. 

2 Andre" Siegfried, Tableaux Politiques de la France de VOuest. 

3 A darker (and, so far as I can judge, overdrawn) picture as 
respects bribery, intimidation, and election frauds is presented by 
Hasbach, Moderne Demokratic, pp. 560-563, who, however, describes 
southern France rather than northern. 



chap, xx THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES 243 

themselves not only to secure the election of their professed 
supporters, but to propitiate as many deputies as possible. 
The Prefect and under-Prefect and all the persons in local 
public employment know this, and do their best, whether ex- 
pressly instructed or not, to promote the candidature of those 
on whom the ministry counts, or whom it seeks to oblige. 
In recent years the candidate, if he feels himself strong, has 
been wont to require these services from the Prefect, whose 
fortunes he may make or mar by his influence with the Gov- 
ernment, and he sometimes lords it over the local officials. 
In 1902 a deputy whose election was being disputed, on the 
ground of the governmental influence exerted on his behalf, 
was reproached with having had himself everywhere pre- 
sented to the voters by the Prefect. " Quite the reverse," 
said he, " it was I who presented him." 

The most active because the most omnipresent and often 
the most intelligent agent in pushing the interests of a can- 
didate, especially one of advanced opinions, is the village 
schoolmaster. He is usually also the clerk of the Commune, 
and has his own reasons for being a strong Eepublican, be- 
cause he is the natural rival of the parish priest. 

However willing a Prefect may be to turn his administra- 
tive machinery to party purposes, he is often embarrassed 
by the fact that the ministry's hold on office is so weak that 
the party of the candidate whom he has been opposing may, 
by some turn of the Parliamentary wheel, come into office and 
punish him for his action. The worshipper of the Sun must 
make sure that it is not a setting sun whom he worships. 
Thus a Prefect may show deficient zeal for ministerial can- 
didates, 1 and could, when the arrondissement was the elec- 
toral area, throw out anchors to windward by earning merit 
with candidates of different political stripes who were stand- 
ing in different arrondissements of his department, Never- 
theless the supporters of the Government actually in power 
have on the whole the advantage, and thus a threatened min- 
istry usually strives to retain office till the Chamber expires 
by effluxion of time, so that it may be able " to make the 
elections." Yet it sometimes happens, in the constant shift- 

i M. Felix Faure ( afterwards President of the Republic ) said in 
1893 that functionaries are often more preoccupied in giving satisfac- 
tion to the Ministry of to-morrow than to that which they actually 
represent. (I quote from Mr. J. E. C. Bodley's France.) 



244 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE part n 

ing of Parliamentary majorities, that the Minister of the 
Interior finds after a few weeks that he has secured a ma- 
jority for his successor. 

When a return is contested on the ground of irregularity 
or fraud or undue influence, the matter goes first to a Com- 
mittee of the Chamber chosen by lot, and then to the full 
Chamber. The Committees are said sometimes to decide im- 
partially, after weighing the (unsworn) evidence laid before 
them. The majority in the Chamber is less scrupulous and 
seats or unseats the members elected in obedience to party 
motives. 1 It is remarked that at the subsequent fresh elec- 
tion the unseated candidate is usually returned, for the 
French voter has a touch of the frondeur in him, and sets 
little store by the decisions of the Chamber, given in the spirit 
which is known to animate it. 

Unsatisfactory as is the condition of things here described, 
there is little talk of mending it. The Chamber would not 
part with its control of disputed elections, nor would any one 
suggest that it should, as in England, be transferred to the 
judges, for it is held that only a body itself the child of uni- 
versal suffrage can be entitled to deal with the results uni- 
versal suffrage purports to have given. As regards official 
interference, the excuse made under the Second Empire that 
in a country so changeful as France it was the first duty of 
every Government to work for the stability of institutions, is 
one to which Republicans who acclaim the sovereignty of the 
people are hardly entitled to resort. If the people is all- 
wise as well as all-powerful, it ought to have its way. The 
practice is in fact constantly denounced by all parties, but it 
continues, because no ministry wishes to be the first to part 
with an advantage which it finds ready to hand in the far- 
reaching power of the central government. The command of 
the machinery makes the temptation; and the defence made 
for yielding to it dates from the earlier days of the Third Re- 
public, when the gravity of the issues then before the Cham- 
ber seemed not only to Royalists, who had seen it unscrupu- 
lously used by Louis Napoleon, but even in some measure to 
Republicans also, sufficient to justify practices theoretically 

i That this frequently happened in England sixty or seventy years 
ago was one of the grounds alleged for transferring the trial of election 
petitions to the judges in 1867. 



chap, xx THE CHAMBEK OF DEPUTIES 245 

indefensible. The system is really of old standing, having 
its roots in the excessive power over local officials vested in the 
Government of the day. As an eminent politician observed 
when inveighing against the evil, "It is not the Government 
I accuse, but Centralization ; not the heir, but the heritage." 

Let it be here mentioned, before proceeding to examine the 
rules of the Chamber and their working, (a) that a deputy 
must have attained the age of twenty-five and have all the 
qualifications of a voting citizen; (b) that members of fam- 
ilies that have heretofore reigned in France cannot become 
candidates; (c) that no one can be a candidate at the same 
time in more than one constituency; and (d) that salaried 
officials, except a few of the highest, are ineligible. Min- 
isters of religion are sometimes elected. Bishops have more 
than once been prominent figures. 

The Chamber lasts for four years, meeting automatically 
in January, and has once only been dissolved before the 
expiration of its term. It is required by law to sit for at 
least five months in each year, but in fact has usually held a 
continuous session, interrupted by short vacations at dif- 
ferent times in the year. It is convoked, not by the Presi- 
dent of the Republic, though he may summon it for an 
extraordinary session, but by its own President. 

This high functionary resembles the Speaker of the Amer- 
ican House of Representatives rather than the Speaker of the 
British House of Commons, for he is not expected to display 
that absolute impartiality which is the distinguishing note of 
the latter, and he may rebuke, sometimes with pungent sar- 
casm, deputies whose language he disapproves. Custom has 
allowed him to favour, yet with due regard to fair play, the 
party to which he belonged before his elevation. He has not 
in recent years intervened in debates, but he keeps his eye 
on his own political future, often aspiring to the Presidency 
of the Republic, and sometimes called from the Chair to be- 
come the head of a Ministry. He is assisted in a general di- 
rection of the business of the Chamber by a Bureau or Stand- 
ing Committee, consisting of the four Vice-Presidents (any 
of whom can preside in his absence), the eight Secretaries, 
and the three Questeurs, who have charge of financial mat- 
ters. All these are deputies and chosen by the Chamber. 

At its first meeting the Chamber divides itself into eleven 



246 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE part n 

sections called Bureaux, the members whereof are chosen by 
lot and similarly renewed monthly in the same way. Their 
chief function used to be to create what are called " Commis- 
sions/ 7 bodies corresponding generally to the Committees of 
the British Parliament and the American Congress, but now 
it is the " Groups " (hereinafter mentioned) who nominate, 
each in proportion to its numerical strength, deputies to rep- 
resent them on a Commission. Every Bill introduced is re- 
ferred to some one of these bodies, which may alter it in any 
way, after hearing it explained and defended by the intro- 
ducer. A member of the Commission, called the Reporter, 
prepares and submits to the Chamber a report upon it as 
amended, stating the reasons for the form the Commission has 
given to it. 1 When it comes before the full Chamber he takes 
charge of it, sometimes almost entirely superseding its intro- 
ducer, even though a Minister. As the membership of an 
important Commission is much sought for, the post of Re- 
porter on an important Bill is an avenue to distinction, or a 
proof of distinction already achieved. Under this system, 
the Chamber through its Commissions exercises a control over 
administration as well as legislation, for they can enquire into 
all the work of a department, summoning its functionaries 
before them, and recommending or refusing the measures the 
department desires. The authority of the ministry is re- 
duced, for its bills may return from the Commission in a 
form different from that which they originally had or which 
ministers approve. The majority of the Commission need 
not be supporters of the Ministry, or anywise disposed to 
meet its wishes. 

The inconveniences attending this system of the dual con- 
trol of ministerial measures are most manifest in the case of 
the Budget. Financial proposals made by the Executive 
come before a Commission of thirty-three members, which 
can alter them at its own pleasure, refusing some appropri- 
ations, adding others, so that, unless it condescends to defer 
to the representations of the Finance Minister, it may pro- 
duce, after long secret deliberations, a Budget very different 
from that which he submitted. So when the Ministerial 

1 1 omit many details regarding these Bureaux and Commissions 
which are not necessary for a comprehension of the working of the 
Chamber. 



chap, xx THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES 247 

scheme comes before the Chamber, the Reporter appears as a 
sort of second and rival Finance Minister, whose views may 
prevail against those of the Cabinet. The Government of 
the day has little influence, except what it may personally 
and indirectly exert, upon the composition of the Commis- 
sions, which may contain a majority of members opposed to 
its general financial policy, or to the view it takes of particu- 
lar measures. The natural result is to render legislation 
incoherent, to make the conduct of financial policy unstable 
and confused, and to encourage extravagance, because min- 
isters cannot prevent expenditure they think needless or mis- 
chievous. A further consequence is to reduce the authority 
of an Executive which can be easily overruled, the jealousy 
which animates the deputies leading them to disregard its 
wishes, perhaps to enjoy the rebuffs it suffers. The power 
of those persons who seem responsible because they were the 
original authors of a measure, or who can be made responsi- 
ble to the public because they hold an office, being thus so 
reduced or destroyed that they cannot fairly be treated as re- 
sponsible, actual control has passed to bodies whose members, 
debating in secret and holding no office, are not effectively 
answerable. The nation cannot, if displeased, punish the lat- 
ter and ought not to punish the former. In these practices 
there is visible a deviation, due to the tendency of an As- 
sembly to encroach wherever it can, from the doctrine to 
which lip-service is paid in France, of the separation of legis- 
lative from executive power, for an Executive is impotent 
when the funds needed for administration are withheld. 

Here let a curious custom be noted. Only since 1885 
have the names of deputies voting in a division been regularly 
recorded and published. 1 Voting is by ballot-papers of two 
colours, white denoting assent, blue disapproval. These are 
collected into an urn passed round by the attendants. A 
deputy may abstain from voting, though present in the Cham- 
ber, and can even vote by proxy, entrusting the function of 
dropping into the urn his paper to a friend who will vote 

1 The names were occasionally published between 1871 and 1885. The 
official record now states the names of deputies who did not vote, or 
were absent on leave, or were detained by attendance at the Budget 
Commission. The names of members voting in divisions in the British 
House of Commons were not recorded before the passing of the Reform 
Act of 1832. 



248 ACTUAL DEMOCEACIES : FRANCE part ii 

white or blue according to what he conceives to be the wishes 
of his colleague. A case was mentioned to me in which an 
obliging deputy deposited the votes of more than thirty of his 
colleagues. 

So much for what may be called the procedure of the 
Chamber. Let us pass to the men who run the machinery. 
As the Chamber is the centre of the whole political system, 
exerting a more complete control than does any legislature in 
any other government, we must examine in some little detail 
the persons who work the system and whom the system forms. 

Though social as well as political equality reigns in France, 
there are still differences of rank, more significant in their 
disabling than in their recommending effect. Very few dep- 
uties come from the ancient nobility or from the large land- 
owners, a section numerous in the West. That financial 
manufacturing and commercial plutocracy, which is called in 
America " Big Business," has few representatives, and among 
these extremely few persons of great wealth. The largest 
element consists of professional men, lawyers, physicians, 
journalists, retired functionaries, and professors or school 
teachers, this last class being the fewest. 

There are not many to speak for agriculture, and even 
fewer had worked with their hands before they entered the 
Chamber. Most of the Socialists belong to the professional 
or commercial class. The Chamber is no more plutocratic 
than it is aristocratic. It consists chiefly of the same upper 
strata of the middle classes as does the United States Con- 
gress or the Parliament of Canada, the chief difference being 
that in those bodies there are even more lawyers, but hardly 
any physicians or teachers or journalists. 1 Few of the bar- 
risters have achieved distinction in their profession, for the 
building up of a large practice would be hardly compatible 
with attendance in the Chamber, but advocates who have suc- 
ceeded there sometimes return to the bar and utilize at it 
their political fame while retaining their seats. Literature 
is represented almost entirely by journalists. If it be true, as 
French critics complain, that there are now few such in- 
tellectual displays as adorned the Chamber in the days of 
Louis Philippe, or in the first Assembly, elected in 1871, of 

i The Chamber elected in 1919 contained 140 advocates, 44 journalists 
or men of letters, 4 Catholic priests, and 3 Protestant clergymen. 



chap, xx THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES 249 

the Third Kepublic, there is plenty of keen intelligence and 
especially of oratorical talent. It is not so much universal 
suffrage that has brought in men from what Gambetta called 
the nouvelles couches societies as the diffusion of secondary 
education, which has made easier the upward path for ability, 
especially of the literary and rhetorical kind. An English 
or American observer is impressed by the large number of 
deputies who possess not merely fluency but the gifts of 
lucid exposition and readiness in debate. Whether a man 
has much or little to say, he seems to know how to say it, 
not indeed in that choice or stately language which delighted 
auditors in the Assembly of 1871, but with readiness, force 
and point. 

Such being the Deputy, whence comes he and how does 
he become a deputy ? Though a man gains by being a resi- 
dent or in the electoral area, or connected with it by birth, 
candidates are not, as in America, restricted to the place of 
their residence, and men of eminence have sat for districts 
with which they had no personal tie. The large majority, 
however, have spent their earlier life in the places they rep- 
resent, and have begun their political career by acquiring in- 
fluence among their neighbours. They enter local councils, 
and thus become known in the canton, the arrondissement, 
perhaps the department. They serve as Maires of their com- 
mune ; they are active in local party work, and alert in look- 
ing after local interests generally. An ambitious doctor or 
lawyer may give gratuitous consultations or otherwise in- 
gratiate himself with a local clientele. To belong to a Ma- 
sonic lodge, or even to an angling society or a gymnastic 
club, — all these things help. Broadly speaking, the person- 
ality of a candidate counts for much, and of course counts for 
more when political issues are least exciting and where con- 
victions are least strong. One must not only cultivate an 
easy and genial manner, but observe, at least in the provinces, 
a decent regularity of life, avoiding, especially in the north- 
ern parts of France (for the South is indulgent), whatever 
could shock the time rigide de la 'province. If one has money 
to spend on local purposes, so much the better, particularly 
in the mountainous districts where people are poor; but as 
local candidates are seldom affluent there is less than in Eng- 
land of what is there called " nursing a constituency." 



250 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FKANCE 



PART II 



When an aspirant has in these ways established his position, 
it is for the party committee of his district to put him for- 
ward as candidate, since the central party organizations count 
for little (except among the Socialists) and do not send down 
a candidate or supply him with the sinews of war. When the 
election comes, the candidate, except in great cities, will 
usually talk more about local affairs and the services he ex- 
pects to render to the constituency than about national politics 
or the merits and programme of his own particular section of 
the Republican party. The authority of party leaders has 
been little invoked since the death of Gambetta, the last states- 
man who had a name to conjure with. Though contests 
evoke much heat, sometimes expressing itself in personal 
abuse, perhaps even leading to a duel, the bulk of the citizens 
may be languid, and many will not sacrifice their Sunday hol- 
iday to come to the polls. The vote cast has been light, ac- 
cording to the standards of Britain, Switzerland, or America, 
rarely however falling below 60 per cent of the qualified 
voters. 1 In 1919 it stood high, only 30 per cent having 
failed to vote. 2 

Once in, the deputy's first care is to stay in. This must 
be achieved — and here I refer less to large towns than to 
the ordinary rural or semi-rural constituencies — by a sedu- 
lous attention to the interests not merely of the district but 
of the individual residents in the district, especially of those 
to whom he owes his seat. Every kind of service is expected 
from him. He must obtain decorations for his leading sup- 
porters, and find a start in life for their sons and sons-in- 
law. Minor posts under Government and licenses to sell 
tobacco have to be secured for the rank and file. All sorts 
of commissions to be performed in Paris are expected from 
him, down to the choice of a wet nurse or the purchase of an 
umbrella. Several hours of his day are consumed in reply- 
ing to the letters which pour in upon him, besides the time 
which must be given to the fulfilment of the behests he 
receives. 

This is slavery. But there are compensations. Apart 

i Between 1881 and 1910 the percentage of abstentions ranged in 
Western France from 24 to 32 per cent. 

2 The numbers were for Continental France, without Alsace-Lorraine 

— electors, 11,048,092; votes cast, 7,801,879; and for Alsace-Lorraine 

— electors, 397,610; votes cast, 328,924. 



chap, xx THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES 251 

from his salary, which to the average member is a thing to be 
considered, he has power. He is one of the nine hundred 
odd who rale France. Though he is the servant of his 
electors, he is often also their master, respected and deferred 
to in his district as at least the equal of the Prefect, and per- 
haps stronger than his local party Committee. He is the 
fountain of honour, the dispenser of patronage, inspiring a 
lively sense of favours to come. So long as he helps the 
Department, and his friends in it, to the satisfaction of their 
desires, he is not likely to be disturbed, unless some sudden 
revulsion of political sentiment should sweep over the coun- 
try. If he is well off, his subscriptions to local purposes help 
him; if poor, people feel it would be hard to turn him out 
and send him to seek a new means of livelihood. Accord- 
ingly, provided he keeps on good terms with the local wire- 
pullers, and is not involved in a scandal which would reach 
the constituency, he is likely, at least in rural areas, to hold 
his seat, and may in the fulness of time transfer himself to 
the calmer waters and longer term of the Senate. A sitting 
member is, like a British member, generally selected by his 
party to fight the seat, so the bulk of members in each Cham- 
ber have sat in a preceding one. In 1919, however, 340 new 
members were elected. 

Next to that of staying in, the chief aim of our deputy is 
to get on. His best course is at first to eschew the grande 
politique, and be content with establishing his position by 
securing a place on one or more of the best Commissions, and 
establishing friendly relations with as many as possible of his 
colleagues, primarily of course with those who share his opin- 
ions, but if possible with other sections also. He usually be- 
gins by inscribing himself as member of one of the numerous 
" groups " into which the Chamber is divided. This brings 
us to consider the parliamentary parties. 

I have already traced in outline the history of the move- 
ments of political opinion in France since 1871. It would 
be tedious, and for our present purpose needless, to describe 
the successive evolutions and modifications, the splits and 
recombinations, by which the broad division of politicians 
into Monarchists and Eepublicans passed into the more nu- 
merous now existing parties. It may suffice to enumerate 
these as respects the Chamber of Deputies, for it is only there 



252 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES: FRANCE part ii 

(and to a less degree in the Senate), not in the country, that 
they are clearly marked. The French habit has long been 
to describe parties by names which had their origin in days 
when Conservatives sat on the right hand of the presiding 
officer, and Liberals on the left; and these names have the 
advantage of being colourless, while terms bearing a reference 
to particular tenets or a particular spirit frequently change 
their meaning, as the title " Progressive " has come to denote 
persons who are really Moderates, even perhaps Clericals, and 
" Kadical," once a name of terror, has been so softened down 
that men talk of " Radicaux Moderes " or " Radicaux Con- 
servateurs." So the name " Socialist " is so far from being 
equivalent to " Collectivist " or " Communist " that one has 
heard of " Socialistes anti-Collectivistes " ; and when a party 
calls itself " Independent," its independence always inclines 
to the Right, or conservative, rather than to the more " ad- 
vanced " side. 1 

The nine groups which existed in 1914 and the eight which 
existed at the beginning of 1920 might be broadly described 
as being fractions of four larger parties, or rather subdivi- 
sions of four types of political opinion — first, the Monar- 

i In 1914 the party groups in the Chamber of Deputies were the fol- 
lowing. I give them as from Right to Left: 

Monarchists (all more or less Clerical in sentiment). 

"Action Liberale populaire." 

Progressive Republicans. 

Republican Union (F6de>ation R6publicaine) . 

Democratic Left. 

Federation of the Left. 

Radical Left. 

Radical Socialists. 

Independent Socialists. 

United Socialists. 
In 1920 there were stated to be besides twenty-one " non-inscrits " 
deputies more or less detached, but classifiable in a general way with 
the Left, the following eight groups: 

1. Independents. 

2. Progressists. 

3. Republicans of the Left. 

4. Republican Democratic Left. 

5. " Action republicaine et sociale." 

6. Radical Socialists. 

7. Republican Socialists. 

8. United Socialists. 

Of these the largest were No. 4 with 93 and No. 6 with 86 members. 
At the election of 1919, which took place under the influence of a 
reaction against Socialism, there was a certain co-operation between 
the Right and the Centre parties. 






chap, xx THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES 253 

chists; secondly, the Moderate Republicans (sometimes called 
Liberals) ; thirdly, the Advanced Republicans, cherishing the 
traditions of the First Revolution ; and lastly, the Socialists, 
whose professed aim is an economic reconstruction of society. 1 
The groups from time to time dissolve, or unite, or re-form 
themselves under other names. They may be — indeed they 
are sure to be — different in 1925 from what they are in 
1920. It is therefore not worth while to describe their 
vaguely defined tenets or their always varying composition. 
Let us now look at the Parliamentary group only as a 
wheel in the Parliamentary machinery. There is nothing 
like it in the American Congress, and only occasionally has 
something like it appeared in the British Parliament. 2 It 
is nominally a political organization, holding certain views 
which it desires to advocate. But it is also personal. Hav- 
ing a social side and directly practical aims, it concerns itself 
with the fortunes of its members. It claims for them places 
on the more important Commissions, and if a new ministry 
has to be formed, the incoming Prime Minister will be likely, 
if the professed opinions of a group do not differ widely 
from those he professes, to strengthen his position by inviting 
one or more of its members to accept a portfolio. A new dep- 
uty may therefore be guided in joining a group not only by 
his own political predilections, or by a wish to play up to the 
general sentiment of his constituents, but also by his estimate 
of what the group can do for his own career. Some few re- 
main outside the regular groups in the class of " deputies not 
inscribed," and they also, it is said, act together on behalf of 
the personal interests and claims each desires to push. 
Though the members of a group have a Chairman and a 
Committee, and though they sometimes meet to consult on 
their collective action and usually vote together, they have not 
what the English call " whips " to bring them up to vote on 
a division. It is only among the Socialists that the obliga- 

i Of the " Nationalists/' who can hardly be described as a party or 
group but who represent a tendency affecting the members of several 
groups, I shall speak later. 

2 There was in the House of Commons a so-called Radical group from 
1870 till 1880, and a sort of " Neo-Conservative " group from 1880 till 
1885, the latter very small but very active, and containing men of 
importance. Of the present House and its varying groups the time has 
not come to speak. British Parliamentarism seems to be entering a 
new phase of development. 



254 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FKANCE part ii 

tion to act as one disciplined body is recognized and enforced 
by the threat of excommunication. 

Besides these political groups there are, or have been, 
others formed on the basis of a specially keen interest in one 
subject, e.g. the French colonies, lay instruction, national 
defence; and also other groups devoted to the protection of 
some material interest. Such is the Agricultural Group, the 
Sugar Group, the Vine-growing Group, the Group of phy- 
sicians. These aggregations form a sort of cross division of 
the Chamber. Most of them have nothing to do with party 
politics, and exert pressure on the ministry only for the ad- 
vancement of their special industrial or commercial aims. 
The Colonial Group has large ambitions, and is frequently 
active in influencing governmental policy in the Chamber 
as well as in prompting the press. 

As the groups are numerous, and no one of them com- 
mands one-third of the Chamber, no ministry expects to pos- 
sess a majority which it can call its own. It must rely on 
a combination of two or more groups, constituting what is 
called, when it has reached solid stability, a Block. While 
the Block holds together, Ministers are reasonably safe. But 
the fluidity of each group imports an uncertainty into the 
action of every combination, so that when a new issue sud- 
denly arises, due perhaps to displeasure at some act of the 
ministry, or to any other cause which creates temporary pas- 
sion, the majority may crumble and the ministry fall, even 
without the open dissolution of the combination. It has also 
sometimes happened that the extreme groups, such as the 
Clericals on the one side and the Socialists on the other, hos- 
tile in principle, suddenly coalesce, and turn the balance of 
votes on a division. The union of extremists against the 
men in the middle is specially dangerous, because seldom pre- 
dictable. These causes, taken together, explain the kaleido- 
scopic changes of government. 

Another feature of the system, surprising to a British or 
American observer, is the absence of recognized leadership. 
Though every Group has its president, who to some extent 
directs it, who negotiates on its behalf with the existing min- 
istry and with other groups, and is presumptively the person 
who will be chosen to represent it in a new ministry, he exerts 
less authority than Parliamentary leaders do in Britain or 



chap, xx THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES 255 

Canada or Australasia. This seems due not altogether to 
the absence of political issues sharply defined as between the 
various Republican groups, but partly to an exaggeration of 
the sentiment of equality combined with the French tendency 
to the assertion of individual will. So soon as any one 
statesman shoots ahead of others by his oratorical gifts or 
forceful personality, he excites first jealousy and then envy. 
His colleagues render to him no more allegiance than their 
own interests or those of the Group prescribe. His enemies 
talk of him as aiming at a sort of dictatorship, and the charge 
gives secret pleasure to some of his adherents. Thus Gam- 
betta fell at the moment when he seemed strongest. Seldom 
has a Parliamentary chief so strong a hold on the country 
outside as to find in its support a means for securing the 
loyalty of his following in the Chamber. At general elec- 
tions, the names of the chief statesmen are no talismans : they 
may, indeed, be scarcely mentioned. No one since Gambetta, 
except perhaps Waldeck Rousseau at the election of 1902, 
has been a popular figure, a name wherewith to conjure, in 
the same sense as were Peel, Palmerston, Gladstone, Disraeli, 
in Britain, or as Macdonald and Laurier were in Canada, or 
as Parkes in New South Wales, or Seddon in New Zealand. 1 
This fact has something to do with the atmosphere of per- 
sonal intrigue which has long suffused the French Chamber. 
If parties were tightly organized, they might find an advan- 
tage in having a recognized leader and making much of 
him. But only the Socialists are so organized, and they 
are the last who would seek to exalt one man above his 
fellows. 

This passion for equality, this dislike of authority, this 
incessant striving for prominence and influence among the 
deputies, each descrying a ministerial portfolio at the end 
of the vista, finds another expression in the constant struggle 
on the part of the Chamber (and its Committees) to assert 
itself against the ministry and grasp more and more of ex- 
ecutive power. The Commissions are already even stronger 
than the Committees of the Senate and the House in Ajnerica, 
and their leading members are wont to express surprise that 

i The constitutional arrangements of the United States and Switzer- 
land scarcely permit a comparison between leadership in France and 
leadership in those countries. 



256 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES: FRANCE pabt ii 

there is not a similar effort in the British House of Com- 
mons to overbear the ministry. 

The every-day work which the Chamber performs may be 
classified as (a) legislation, (b) criticism of executive de- 
partments, (c) displacement of ministries. In legislation 
the contrast between measures introduced and measures 
passed is startling. A deputy finds their introduction an 
easy means of attracting notice, and can thus please his 
constituents, whom he deluges with copies. A first and sec- 
ond reading are readily granted on the plea of urgency, but 
the great majority go no further, being stifled or shelved in 
the Commissions. Proposals on subjects of importance 
brought in by a minister have a better chance, but may 
emerge from a Commission so changed as to be scarcely rec- 
ognizable. Comparatively few are passed into law. Ques- 
tions of the first magnitude, debated session after session, re- 
main long unsettled. This happens in all legislatures, but 
perhaps most frequently in France, not merely because the 
Commission system and the group system hamper the power 
of a ministry, but for a deeper reason also, viz. the existence 
of the Civil Code, which has permanently fixed so many 
principles of private civil law as to induce a dislike of inno- 
vations, for in the French mind, which superficial observers 
have called volatile, there is a strong vein of conservatism. 
New questions, economic and social, have emerged, especially 
during the last half-century, which the Code does not cover, 
but the Chamber does not find in legislation its chief interest, 
as is realized by those who notice how scanty is the attendance 
when important Bills are under discussion. Its delight is in 
personal matters and those " live issues " which affect the 
fortunes of a government. Any mistake made by a Minister, 
any conduct which can be represented as having either a pro- 
clerical or an anti-clerical tendency, any act which either 
offends the Labour Unions or betrays subservience to them, 
leads to animated debates which may shake the ministry if it 
be weak, or accentuate hostility if it is defiant. Such acts 
furnish pretexts for resorting to that favourite method of at- 
tacking a Cabinet which is called the Interpellation. The 
deputy gives notice that he will interrogate a minister on 
some declaration made or administrative act done by him. 
The interpellation consists of a speech denouncing the con- 



chap, xx PKESSUKE ON DEPUTIES 257 

►duct or the policy blamed, and asking the Prime Minister, 
or the Minister personally responsible, for an explanation. 
Neither the Cabinet nor the particular Minister is obliged 
to accept the debate on the spot, so usually a later day is 
fixed for the interpellation. When that day has arrived and 
the debate has run its course, a motion is made for passing 
to the Order of the day (i.e. proceeding to the next business 
on the paper). Then arises the opportunity for defeating 
the Cabinet. The Ordre du jour can be either pur et simple 
or motive. The Ordre pur et simple is a motion stating, 
without any word of praise or blame for the Administration, 
that, the debate being at an end, the House resumes its pre- 
viously appointed work. The Ordre du jour motive adds to 
this resolution some words approving or condemning the con- 
duct of the Ministry, the favourable resolutions coming from 
the friends, the unfavourable from the enemies of the Cab- 
inet. The skill of the Opposition is shown in so phrasing 
their motions as to rope in the largest number possible of 
groups hostile to the ministry, while introducing something 
against which a group likely to befriend the ministry will find 
it hard to vote. Before the division the Ministry declare 
which of these ordres du jour they are disposed to accept. 
If they carry it, they are back into smooth water. If de- 
feated, their bark goes down. These interpellations are the 
field-days of politics, rousing the greatest excitement, and 
drawing crowds of spectators. If the Cabinet has lost moral 
authority, or if it becomes known that it is riven by internal 
dissensions, almost any pretext will serve. Such a pretext 
is seldom found in matters of foreign policy, for an honour- 
able tradition disposes men to avoid anything that could 
weaken France in the face of the outer world. Ministries 
fall more frequently by these interpellations than in divisions 
on legislative or financial measures, and they may fall quite 
suddenly, perhaps by an unexpected combination of groups, 
perhaps by want of promptitude in accepting, or themselves 
devising, the ordre du jour motive which will carry them 
safely down the rapids. 

The public business of the Chamber is not, however, the 
chief care of the deputy. He has private work to do which 
affects not only his own personal fortunes but the exercise of 

the functions discharged in public sittings. The relations 
vol. i s 



258 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES: FRANCE part ii 

(already described) which he maintains with his constituents 
oblige him to be in constant contact with the administrative 
departments. Only from the latter can he obtain the favours 
which he owes to the former. Ministers dispense the hon- 
ours, the medals and ribands, the administrative posts, mostly 
of small consequence, the tobacco licences, and even the col- 
lege bursaries. To them the deputy goes when the com- 
mune or the arrondissement desires a bridge or a road, when 
a farmer wants to be compensated for damage done to his 
vines by a hail-storm, when a taxpayer disputes the tax- 
gatherer's claim, when a parent wishes to have an indulgent 
view taken of his son's performances in an examination, 
when a litigant thinks that a word of recommendation might 
help him in a court of justice. 1 The constituent writes to 
the deputy and the deputy approaches the minister, and when 
either a grant- of money to the commune, or a riband, or a 
salaried post is in question, the minister is made to under- 
stand that the deputy's support at the next critical division 
will be affected by the more or less benevolent spirit the Ad- 
ministration displays. Thus besides the great game of poli- 
tics played by the parties in the Chamber, besides the pres- 
sure of the Commissions upon the Administration, there is a 
continuous process of triangular trafficking between the con- 
stituents, the deputy, and the ministers, which is, to the two 
latter, always vexatious and often humiliating. A somewhat 
similar process went on once in England, and is not extinct, 
though now much attenuated, in the United States. Its 
prevalence in France, where the grosser forms of corruption 
are comparatively slight, is due to the concentration in the 
National Government of the whole administrative machinery 
of the country, every local functionary being appointed from 
Paris, and the cost of most kinds of local, public work being 
defrayed by the national treasury. 2 A French Administra- 
tion might well desire to have less far extended power, for its 
power is its weakness. 

i It is not to be supposed that in these latter cases justice suffers. 
It is easy to write a letter which can be read between the lines. 

2M. PoincarS, speaking in the Chamber in 1912 (June 25) observed: 
" Nous sommes obliges d'employer la plus grande partie de notre activity 
a des besognes fastidieuses, a des demarches ingrates et nous en arrivons 
sous la passion des influences locales a consid6rer comme une nScessite* 
vitale pour conserver notre mandat notre ingGrence quotidienne dans 
toutes les questions administratives." 



chap, xx PAYMENT OF DEPUTIES 259 

The Chamber is full of talent because, though many of the 
members have come from narrow surroundings and retain 
narrow views, the quickness and flexibility of the French 
mind enable them to adjust themselves to the conditions of a 
large assembly more readily than would most Englishmen or 
Americans. When an exciting moment arrives, the debates 
reach a high level of excellence. Repartees are swift and 
bright, and great tactical skill is displayed in escaping dangers 
or forming combinations on the spur of the moment. Tur- 
bulent scenes occur, but none worse than have once or twice 
occurred both in Congress and in the House of Commons, nor 
has violence approached the pitched battles of Buda Pest, 
where benches were broken, and inkstands hurtled through 
the air. There is little personal rancour, even among those 
who are most bitterly opposed in politics. Deputies will 
abuse one another in the Chamber and forthwith fraternize 
in the corridors, profuse in compliments on one another's 
eloquence. The atmosphere is one of a friendly camara- 
derie, which condemns acridity or vindictiveness. Pari- 
sians say that the level of manners has declined since 
1877, and the style of speaking altered, with a loss of the 
old dignity. Wit may be as abundant, but one misses that 
philosophic thought by which the Assemblies of 1848 and 
1871 impressed the nation and won the admiration o£ 
Europe. 

The deputy receives a salary of 15,000 francs (£600 = 
$2800) a year. The sum used to be 9000 francs, but in 1906 
the deputies voted themselves an increase up to the present 
figure, rather to the displeasure of the country. Are they 
then fairly described as professional politicians ? The mere 
fact of payment does not make them so, any more than it 
does the members of the British and Australian Parliaments. 
Comparatively few have entered the Chamber merely to make 
a living, though there are many whose effort to remain there 
is more active because they have abandoned their former 
means of livelihood. It would have been practically impos- 
sible not to pay those who quit their avocations to give their 
whole time to politics. Payment may not have done much 
to lower the moral standard of political life : it may indeed 
have enabled some to resist the temptations which surround 
them, yet it necessarily tends to make them eager to keep 



260 ACTUAL DEMOCEACIES : FKANCE part n 

their seats, and in so far affects their independence. 1 They 
are not, as a rule, closely held to the terms of their electoral 
professions of faith, though proposals have been submitted 
to the Chamber that the popular mandate of any one who 
has disregarded these professions should be deemed, and if 
necessary judicially pronounced, to have been forfeited. It 
is customary for a deputy to appear before his constituents 
at least once a year, as in England, and to give a review of 
the political situation, which furnishes an opportunity for 
questioning him on his conduct. It is not, however, by his 
action in the grande politique of the Chamber that a deputy 
(other than a Socialist) usually stands or falls. Those few 
who are supposed to represent great financial or commercial 
interests need not greatly fear the attacks of extreme par- 
tisans in their districts, for they are likely to have the means 
provided them of securing by various influences the fidelity 
of the bulk of their constituents. 

The chief differences between the professional politician 
of France and him of America is that the latter depends even 
more on his party organization than on what he secures for 
his constituents, that he can seldom count on a long tenure 
of his seat or of an administrative post, and that he can more 
easily find a business berth if he is sent back to private life. 
The number of those who belong to the class described in 
America as " professionals " is of course far larger there than 
in France, for it includes a host of persons who are not mem- 
bers of legislatures, most of the work they do being of a 
humbler kind. 

i Rousseau wrote : " Sitot que le service public cesse d'etre la prin- 
cipal affaire des citoyens, et qu'ils aiment mieux servir de leur bourse 
que de leur personne, l'£tat est deja pres de sa ruine " (Contrat Social, 
iii. 15). 



CHAPTER XXI 

CABINET MINISTERS AND LOCAL PARTY ORGANIZATIONS 

Three powers rule France: the Deputies, the Ministers, 
and the local Party Committees. We may now pass to the 
second of these three forces that are incessantly contending 
or bargaining. 

The Cabinet ministers are in practice, though not by law, 
either deputies or senators, and all expect, when their brief 
span of office has ended, to return to their functions as private 
members and resume the role of critics till the time comes for 
them to succeed their successors. Herein France resembles 
the British self-governing Dominions, in which every min- 
ister sits in Parliament. 1 and is unlike the United States, 
where a minister not only cannot sit in Congress but has, 
more frequently than not, never sat there. Thus the min- 
ister is by temperament, ideas, and habits first and always 
a member of the legislature. He knows his Chamber's ways, 
and has an intimacy, in which there may be little enough of 
friendship, with most of its members. 

The person who has been summoned to form a Cabinet as 
President of the Council, selects his colleagues, choosing most 
of them from his own particular group, but generally adding 
one or two or more from other Republican groups by which 
he expects to be supported. The differences in their views 
and affiliations do not prevent the persons thus selected from 
getting on together and presenting a united front to the op- 
posing faction. Self-interest prescribes this, and the political 
cleavages between the Republican groups are not very deep. 
Consistency is one of the lesser virtues in politics. A recent 

i In England, the custom which requires a Minister to be a member 
of one or other House of Parliament has been sometimes departed from, 
though only for a time, since the prolonged absence of a person respon- 
sible for the management of a department would be highly inconvenient. 
I take no account of the cases which occurred during the war of 1914-19, 
for the conditions were then quite exceptional. 

261 



262 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE pabt ii 

French Prime Minister observed, " Les necessites font eclater 
les dogmes." 

The qualities which bring a deputy into the class of 
" Ministrables " 1 do not much differ from those which lead 
to Cabinet office in every democratic country and popular 
assembly. In France they may be summed up as — Ready 
eloquence, alertness of mind, Parliamentary tact, personal 
popularity, general adaptability. In the allotment of posts 
knowledge counts for something, and most so in the depart- 
ments of finance and of the naval and military services. But 
adaptability counts for more. 2 Dignity of character and a 
spotless reputation are a valuable asset, especially in a Prime 
Minister, yet their absence does not prevent a man from ris- 
ing high. 

The Cabinet offices vary in number — in 1913 there were 
twelve — all of the same rank and carrying the same salary, 
but there may be (and in war time were) ministers without 
a portfolio, so the deliberative Cabinet might be of any size, 
though it had never, up to 1914, exceeded seventeen. 

French ministers cannot well be compared with those of 
the United States, for the latter do not sit in the legislature, 
and are often selected less for their capacity than because 
they belong to States which the President wishes to gratify 
by giving them representation in his Cabinet. An American 
minister usually disappears from Washington after his four 
years' term of office, and may be no more heard of in the 
world of politics, while in France the ex-Minister holds on ; 
and the wealth of the nation in former occupants of high 
office grows so fast by frequent Cabinet changes that there 
are plenty of tried men from whom a Prime Minister may 
make his selections. Talent is never lacking, though it is 
more frequently of the showy than of the solid order. 

The dignity of a Minister is, next to the Presidency of 
the Republic and the Presidencies of one or other Chamber, 
the goal of a politician's ambitions. It carries the title of 
Excellency, and its possessor is received with every mark of 
honour when he visits a provincial city to perform some pub- 

1 A word probably suggested by the Italian adjective Pcu=<papibile 
(of a man fit to be chosen Pope) ; and an equivalent of the American 
phrase, " Cabinet timber." 

2 True of England also, where a Minister is ( in normal times ) very 
rarely selected with any regard to his special knowledge. 



CHAP. XXI 



CABINET MINISTERS 



lie function. The power which belongs to it is more exten- 
sive than a like office enjoys in any other free country, for 
nowhere else are the functions of the Executive so far-reach- 
ing. But this power is greater in semblance than in reality. 
The machinery of French administration is so complicated 
that the permanent official hierarchy, deferential as they are 
to their chief, can impede his action when they think that 
he is breaking through their settled practice, for want of 
expert knowledge may make him helpless in their hands, not 
to add that he is generally deposed, or transferred to some 
other post, before he has had time to learn to " know the 
ropes." If he tries to understand everything he is asked to 
sign, work accumulates, and the machine stops. While he 
is struggling to master his duties, he has not only to face his 
critics in the Chamber but to endure the daily plague of 
requests from deputies to do this or that job for the benefit 
of their constituents. High-minded and courageous as he 
may be, he is obliged to think of the fortunes of the ministry, 
and must yield to many an unwelcome demand in order to 
secure the vote of the deputy who himself seeks to secure the 
vote of his constituent. Nor are the deputies the only peo- 
ple to be feared. The financiers and heads of big business 
enterprises, partly by the power of their wealth, partly 
through the newspapers or the deputies, whom they can use as 
tools, may bring to bear a formidable pressure. 

Two other complaints are heard in France. One is that 
the minister brings with him, or is soon surrounded by, a 
swarm of personal dependents, private secretaries, and vari- 
ous hangers-on. These constitute what may be called his 
private political and patronage staff, who help in his parlia- 
mentary work, deal with the press, keep an eye on places to 
be disposed of, and are what physicians call a nidus for 
intrigue as well as an annoyance to the permanent officials of 
the department. The other charge is that the tendency of 
local officials to refer everything to Paris continues to grow, 
delaying business and increasing the risks of jobbery, be- 
cause the Minister, who cannot know the facts as well as the 
Prefect on the spot, is at the mercy of interested representa- 
tions. 

The " expectation of life," as insurance agents say, of a 
French Ministry is short. Between 1875 and 1914 there 



264 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE part ii 

were 48 administrations with an average duration of nine 
months and twenty-two days. Only one ministry since 1896, 
that of M. Waldeck Rousseau, had lasted for more than two 
years. A change of Ministry makes little difference to the 
country, and cannot — as it often can in England — be 
deemed to indicate any change of popular opinion. When a 
Ministry falls it does not lose a public confidence which it 
may never have possessed. This is a phenomenon which 
Frenchmen deplore as harmful to the nation, because it pre- 
vents ministers from acquiring a grasp of their departmental 
duties, delays legislative progress, and creates a general sense 
of instability, defects which have done much to discredit 
Parliamentarism in the eyes of the people. Yet they are less 
serious evils than they would be in other countries, and that 
for two reasons. They do not disorganize, though they dis- 
turb, the general course of administration, because the great 
machine goes steadily on its way, being worked by a strong 
and competent bureaucracy which is as little affected by 
changes at the top as the equally strong and competent bu- 
reaucracy of the Roman Empire was disturbed in the prov- 
inces by the frequent accession to supreme power of one mili- 
tary adventurer after another. They affect but slightly the 
foreign policy of France, for its general lines have been pre- 
scribed by the necessity of maintaining unity in the face of a 
threatening enemy. They are an evil less serious than the 
inner malady of which they are the visible symptom. What 
then are the causes which make ministries so unstable and 
changes so frequent? Those which appear on the surface 
have been already stated, viz. the number of groups in the 
Chamber, the want of discipline in these groups and shifting 
of deputies from one to another, the suddenness with which 
political crises arise, the tendency of extreme groups to unite 
for the momentary aim of defeating a ministry which they 
dislike for opposite reasons, the impatience which makes dep- 
uties desire a change for the sake of a change. But behind 
these there are other causes of wider scope, due to permanent 
conditions. Some of these may be enumerated. 

(1) Regional divisions of opinion in the country, making 
the political tendencies of the West, of the North and East, 
of the South, and (still more markedly) of the South-east dif- 



chap, xxi CABINET INSTABILITY 265 

fer so much from one another as to prevent a general con- 
sensus of view on fundamental questions. 

(2) The antagonism between the strongly Roman Cath- 
olic proclivities of certain sections of the population and the 
anti-religious, or at least anti-clerical, vehemence of other 
sections. 

(3) The hostility of the industrial masses, especially in 
the manufacturing and mining areas, to the employers and 
to the richer sort of people generally. But for the outside 
pleasure, enforcing national cohesion, a class war might have 
broken out in many places, as indeed it has done at intervals 
in Paris, and to a less extent in other industrial centres. 

(4) The indifference to politics of a large part of the agri- 
cultural population. This has its good side in so far as it 
has prevented party passion from seizing on the bulk of the 
nation and making the struggles of the Chamber provoke out- 
bursts of violence over the country. But it has been also 
unfortunate in having failed to keep the deputies in order, 
to condemn intrigues, to discourage the creation of small 
groups, to make the parties feel their responsibility to the 
nation. If Parliamentary parties were formed on well-de- 
fined and permanent lines, the policy approved by a majority 
at a general election might be steadily pursued (as in Eng- 
land or Holland or Canada) until the country changes its 
mind, or some conspicuous error brings about the collapse of 
a ministry. 

(5) To these causes one may perhaps add the fact that 
since the death of Gambetta no single leader of dominating 
personality has arisen. Democracies need men who by their 
genius, or by the strength and worth of their characters, can 
become not merely leaders but inspirers of a party. 1 The 
foremost men of the last forty years have been parliamentary 
rather than popular chiefs. Some of them (I speak of course 
only of those who have passed from the scene) have shown 
brilliant talent and great force. But none have had that 
sort of hold on the country which enabled Pitt or Peel or 
Gladstone in England, Calhoun, Clay, Webster, and Lincoln 
(not to mention later statesmen) in America, to become 

1 Jules Ferry seemed for a time to be coming near to this position, 
and Waldeck Rousseau, a finer character, came still nearer. 



266 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE part ii 

national figures, who were as necessary to their parties as 
their parties were to them. To the causes which prevent the 
development of leadership in France we must presently 
return. 

After the deputies and the ministers comes the third and 
largest set of the actual though unconspicuous rulers of 
France, those who all over the country keep the machine of 
party government running, managing the elections by which 
deputies are chosen and ministers are installed in power. To 
understand the part played by the local committees we must 
recur to the political parties as already enumerated. 

These parties, though more or less organized in the Cham- 
ber of Deputies, do not extend over the country at large, or, 
to speak more exactly, they exist in the country as tendencies 
or nuances of opinion rather than as political organisms. 
For the purposes of France as a whole one must think of 
those four parties, or rather four schools of opinion already 
noted — the Eight or Clerical Monarchist, the Centre or 
Moderate Republicans, the Radicals or Advanced Repub- 
licans, and the Socialists. Of these four only one, the So- 
cialists, constitute a cohesive party in the English or Amer- 
ican sense, for they alone have created and maintain a well- 
knit organization extending over a large part of the country 
and gripping its members tightly together outside as well as 
inside the Chamber. Of the other three, the Clericals or 
Monarchists hold well together, but the number of those 
among them who profess Legitimist principles has been much 
reduced, and their organization is confined to certain areas. 
The other two, Moderate and Advanced Republicans, are 
divided into the sections already described. Some of these 
sections have a central party committee as well as a certain 
number of local committees which carry on a propaganda, 
publish literature, and look after elections. No party group 
or section has, however, an organization ramified through all 
the constituencies like the three parties (Tory, Liberal, and 
Labour) which divide Great Britain or the still better drilled 
and more constantly active two great historic parties of the 
United States. There would be no use in trying to work a 
Socialist organization in the agricultural parts of Brittany, 
nor a Monarchist party in Marseilles. Accordingly no sec- 
tion dreams of running in every electoral district candidates 



chap, xxi POLITICAL PAKTIES 267 

of its own particular colour, but confines itself to those in 
which it has a reasonable chance of success. 

If you ask an average French citizen about his political 
views, he is as likely as not to say that he takes nothing to 
do with politics ; " Monsieur, je ne m'occupe pas de la 
politique." If, however, he has views and is willing to ex- 
press them, he will probably prove to be, in the rural parts 
or small towns of the west and north, either a Conservative 
of Clerical leanings or a Moderate anti-Clerical Republican; 
in the south-east, the central, and the eastern regions or small 
towns, either an Advanced or a Moderate Republican ; in the 
mining districts and the great industrial centres, either an 
Advanced Republican or a Socialist. There are of course 
nearly everywhere some men of Socialist views, and every- 
where some few Clericals or Monarchists, usually of a Legi- 
timist colour. Candidates, therefore, whatever group in the 
Chamber they mean to join, belong to one or other of these 
four types of opinion, and do not — always excepting the 
Socialists — usually announce themselves to a constituency 
as adherents of any one Republican group in particular. It 
is between the four types that the electoral battle rages. The 
candidate may be sent down, or be financially aided, by the 
central committee of a group, but he does not necessarily 
appear as their man, nor (unless he be a Socialist) as selected 
by a local committee of a particular stripe. He stands on 
his own account, just as candidates did in Britain in the mid- 
dle of last century, before parties had begun to be locally or- 
ganized. When he issues his address, it is accompanied by 
a list of his chief local supporters, who constitute a sort of 
general committee, but it is only a few of the more active 
among them who form, along with the candidate and his 
agents, the working committee. Other candidates may come 
forward belonging to the same or a nearly allied section of 
the Republican party, each recommending himself less by the 
particular character of his views than by his personal merits 
and by the fervour of his promises to serve the material in- 
terests of the constituency. Candidatures are numerous be- 
cause not generally costly. There used to be three, four, or 
Hve (or possibly more) aspirants to the single seat, perhaps a 
Monarchist and a Socialist, and three Republicans of slightly 
different shades, but now under the new system of election by 



268 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE pabt ii 

departments with proportional representation, the number is 
larger. All went to the poll; and when, as frequently hap- 
pened, none secured an absolute majority, it was usual for the 
one among the Eepublicans who had received the fewest votes 
to retire, so that the Eepublican party might have the best 
chance against a Monarchist or a Socialist. There is, how- 
ever, no established practice in these matters, and an Ad- 
vanced Radical may feel himself nearer to a Socialist than 
to a Eepublican of a less vivid hue, while some moderate Ee- 
publicans differ but slightly from Conservatives. 

Acute French observers distinguish two types of election. 
In one there is a more or less avowed coalition on the plat- 
form of anti-clericalism by the various groups of the Centre 
and the Left against the groups of the Eight. The other 
type shows a sort of combination or co-operation of the Cen- 
tre, or Moderate Eepublicans, with the Eight on the plat- 
form of anti-Socialism and " social order " against the So- 
cialists and more advanced Eadicals. The election of 1906 
belonged to the former type, the election of 1919 to the latter. 
In it the Socialist party suffered a set-back, owing to the un- 
easiness created by the language and policy of their most 
extreme men. In France, even more than elsewhere, ex- 
tremists produce by their activity and vehemence the impres- 
sion that they speak for the whole party, and thereby damage 
its cause. 

In most constituencies, or at any rate in those dominated 
by the Advanced Eepublicans, political committees are kept 
alive during the interval between one election and another in 
order to look after the interests both of the party and of the 
candidate, and work if necessary in local elections, whenever 
these are fought on political lines, as well as in Senatorial 
elections for the Department. Such committees are not, as 
in America, Great Britain, and Australia, elected by the local 
members of the party, and though often in touch with the 
Central Committee in Paris of the group with which they 
are in sympathy, they do not take their orders from it. It 
may excite surprise that in a country where democratic prin- 
ciples are so ardently professed and where the disposition to 
work out every principle with consistent logic is so strong, the 
local committee which conducts the business of the party 



chap, xxi SECKET SOCIETIES 269 

should not be officially created, and from time to time * re- 
newed, as is done in the United States, by a vote of all the 
local members of the party. The reason is that the bulk of 
the citizens are less definitely committed to any one party 
than they are in the English-speaking countries, and that the 
groupings in the Chamber are not generally represented by 
like groupings over the country at large. The local commit- 
tees are rather what used to be called in Scotland " cliques " 
— small camarillas of persons whose political activity is due 
either to the fervour of their attachment to a certain set of 
doctrines or to a desire to secure local influence and obtain 
the best of what is going in the way of honours and benefits 
for themselves and their kinsfolk or friends. Such good 
things are obtainable (as already observed) from the Ad- 
ministration through the deputy, who is the Fountain of 
Honour. The clique goes to him. He presses the ministry, 
or tries to overawe the Prefect. Sometimes there is in the 
clique a strong man who fills the place of the American Boss, 
but more frequently the deputy is himself a sort of Boss, 
being in constant and confidential relations with the chiefs 
of the committee and dependent upon their support, just as 
they are dependent on him, for without him they could not 
get those favours the dispensation whereof is the basis of their 
local power. The men who compose these local cliques — 
minor officials or ex-officials, shopkeepers, lawyers, doctors, 
teachers, journalists — constitute, along with the deputies 
and a few rich men, financiers, chiefs of industry and owners 
of great newspapers, what are called the classes dirigeantes 
of France, the practical rulers of the country, though of 
course more or less controlled by that public opinion which 
they bear a large part in making. 

From this description, however, I must not omit two other 
political forces, the one clerical, the other aggressively anti- 
clerical. In many places, especially in the Catholic West, 
the cure (the priest's house, or what is called in England the 

i Local political party committees in France are a creation of the 
Third Republic. When universal suffrage had been established and the 
party system had " got into its stride," some kind of organization be- 
came necessary; but the conditions of the country have prevented it 
from developing to the extent attained in the United States, or even in 
England and Australia. 



270 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE part ii 

parsonage) is the natural centre for ecclesiastical and pro- 
ecclesiastical action, and there are also some Catholic unions 
and associations, with numerous branches, which exert power, 
though probably less power than their antagonists credit them 
with. Over against these clerical organizations stand the 
secret Republican societies, and especially the Freemasons. 
This ancient order, which in America is non-partisan, and 
in England rather Conservative than Liberal in its proclivi- 
ties (so far as it has any), is in France, as in Italy and Spain, 
Republican and anti-religious, and as such is condemned in 
those countries, as well as in Ireland, by the Roman Church. 
Its Lodges are in France rallying-grounds for the Advanced 
Republicans, and are believed to possess immense influence, 
which (as always happens with secret societies) is sometimes 
perverted to personal ends. These underground organiza- 
tions, ecclesiastical and anti-ecclesiastical, create an atmos- 
phere of mystery and suspicion in local politics not favour- 
able to the free expression of opinion, and tending to keep 
sensitive men out of local politics, just as the intrigues of 
the Chamber deter such men from entering Parliamentary 
life. 



CHAPTEK XXII 

JUDICIAL AND CIVIL ADMINISTRATION 

The Judicial Bench is one of the oldest and most re- 
spected of French institutions, adorned in time past by many 
illustrious names, and constituting under the ancien regime 
what was called the noblesse de robe. It is not, as in Eng- 
lish-speaking countries, virtually a branch of the profession 
of advocacy, but, as in most parts of the European continent, 
a distinct calling, which young men enter when their legal 
education is finished, instead of being the crowning stage, as 
in England, of a forensic career.. Englishmen and Amer- 
icans naturally prefer their own system, which restricts ju- 
dicial appointments to those who have had experience at the 
Bar. This plan would, if applied to republican Erance, have 
one serious drawback. Advocates who were also deputies 
might recommend themselves for judicial posts by political 
services in the Chamber, and would be likely to retain on 
the bench their political proclivities. The British system is 
doubtless exposed to the same risk, but both in England and 
in Scotland tradition and the fear of professional disap- 
proval have been so strong for more than a century that 
though judges are sometimes appointed as a reward for party 
services, public opinion keeps them straight. They may 
sometimes have a slight half -unconscious bias, but they would 
not lower themselves to do the bidding of a government. 

Both the higher French judges and the lowest rank, called 
juges de paix, are appointed by the Minister of Justice. 
Under the old Monarchy judicial posts were purchased; and 
Montesquieu defended the system by the remark that if they 
had been in the gift of the Crown they would have been be- 
stowed upon Court favourites, probably less competent and 
less trustworthy than the sons of judicial families whose 
parental purchasers had imbued them with judicial tradi- 
tions. The appointment is permanent, for, in principle and 

271 



272 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE pabt ii 

as a rule, a judge cannot be removed except with the consent 
of the Cour de Cassation, the highest Court of Appeal. Re- 
movals for incompetence or delinquency are rare. But there 
have been times when the government of the day, fearing the 
anti-Republican tendencies of some of the judges, has re- 
quired them to swear fidelity to the Republic, or has, after 
passing statutes suspending the rule of irremovability, gone 
so far as to displace a number of those whom they distrusted. 
This process, called a "purification" (epuration), was ap- 
plied between 1879 and 1883 to remove a considerable num- 
ber of judges and other legal officials whose loyalty to the 
Republic was suspected. 1 So bold a step, being the act of 
a dominant party, gave a shock to public sentiment; but it 
must be remembered that in a country where the form of gov- 
ernment itself is an issue between parties, as was at that 
time the case, the need for defending existing institutions is 
deemed to excuse extreme measures. In a.d. 1745 an Eng- 
lish judge known to belong to the party of the exiled Stuarts 
might conceivably have been deemed a potential rebel and ex- 
truded from the Bench by an address of both Houses of 
Parliament. 

An easier method of making vacancies to which there can 
be appointed persons whom a ministry desires to have as 
judges in any particular court is found in promoting an ex- 
isting judge and filling his place with the person desired. 
The hope of promotion from a lower to a higher court is an 
influence which a minister can, and sometimes does, bring to 
bear upon a judge. It is in one way or another his interest 
to stand well with the Government, and, to some extent, even 
with the deputies from the district in which he sits, which is 
usually, if he can so arrange, the district to which he belongs 
by birth or adoption, and where he dwells among relatives 
and friends. One hears other ways mentioned in which gov- 
ernments or persons of influence with governments have been 
known to interfere with the ordinary course of justice, such 
as transferring a case from one court to another, or in the 
assignment by the Procureur-General (Attorney-General) of 
a case to a particular Judge d' instruction 2 or to the president 

i The number has been given at 982 of the former and 1763 of the 
latter class. 

2 The title given to the official charged with the investigation and 



chap, xxn CIVIL ADMINISTRATION 273 

of a particular tribunal ; but there seems to be little basis for 
such charges, for the rules of judicial administration are 
uniform and pretty strictly observed. Deputies and others 
who possess influence, political or financial, are reported to 
approach judges, or give letters recommending litigants to 
their attention, a proceeding which, though disapproved, is 
not stamped out. 

France has been so proud of her judiciary as to be ex- 
tremely sensitive to its honour. This makes even small de- 
linquencies noticed and lamented, and engenders suspicions 
that there may be more delinquencies than the public knows. 
So far as a stranger can judge, they appear to be rare. The 
judges are poorly paid, but the dignity of the office attracts 
capable men of high character, and a laudable standard of 
legal science is maintained in the decisions, those of the 
higher courts being reported as carefully, if not as fully, as 
the judgments of British or American tribunals. The judges 
in these courts are conspicuous social figures, taking rank 
among the first citizens of the communities within which they 
reside. If the government of the hour sometimes gets a little 
more than it ought from the judges, it gets so much less than 
it desires, that it has sometimes threatened another " puri- 
fication." This seems improbable, unless an extreme party 
should obtain control of both Chambers. Great as is the 
power in France of abstract democratic theory, no one seems 
to suggest the direct election of judges by the people. Such 
a change would be unwelcome to deputies and ministers, who 
desire to retain all possible kinds of patronage. 

The Civil Service 

The Civil Service of the country consists, as in England, 
of a small branch which is political, including the offices 
which change with each ministry, such as the under secre- 
taries in the central departments, and of that far larger 

preparation of a criminal case. This could happen only in those few 
places where more than one juge d' instruction is attached to a tribunal, 
and the function of the official is only to report if there is a case for 
a prosecution. The French judicial system, with its separate adminis- 
trative courts and special treatment of the military and naval services, 
presents more varieties than are found in English-speaking countries. 
It need hardly be said that much less use is made of trial by jury 
in civil cases than is the practice in England and the United States. 
VOIi. I T 



274 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE pabt ii 

branch which is permanent, carrying on the regular adminis- 
trative work. 

The civil administration is the oldest institution in France. 
Established under Richelieu and Louis XIV., it was inter- 
rupted and, for the moment, shattered, by the first Revolu- 
tion. Reconstructed by Bonaparte during the Consulate, it 
has remained little changed in essentials since his time. No 
more need be said of it than will suffice to indicate the rela- 
tion it bears to the democratic character of the government. 
It has suffered at the hands of democracy, yet has shown itself 
strong enough to mitigate some of the faults it cannot cure. 

The Civil Service of France is larger in proportion to 
the population than that of any other free country, possibly, 
indeed, than that of any country in Europe or America, be- 
cause the sphere reserved for local self-governing authorities 
is so narrow that nowhere else, not even in Germany, is so 
much work thrown upon the central administration. Men's 
eagerness to enter even the humbler walks of official life has 
led to the multiplication of posts by governments tempted to 
increase their patronage, and has made the competition for 
posts extremely keen. 1 Elective administrative offices, such 
as exist in the United States, are unknown, all appointments 
being made, as in England, by the Executive. Admission 
to most branches of the service, including those for which 
special knowledge or training is required, is by competitive 
examination, while the comparatively few places of a political 
character, whose occupants change with a change of ministry, 
lie outside the examination rules. To these the minister ap- 
points at his discretion, probably influenced, at least where 
the post is of some consequence, not only by the politics of 
the aspirant, but also by private pressure exerted on his be- 
half. Promotion within the service is understood to go 
partly by seniority, partly by merit; but it is also largely 
governed by the political inducements which the deputy or 
some other important supporter brings to bear. In this way 
the less deserving may climb high, while efficiency suffers. 
No one can be displaced, except for some fault, though 
vested interests may be preserved by transfer or promotion 

i It is sometimes said that the equal division of inheritances, believed 
to have the effect of discouraging emigration, tends to increase the 
eagernesss to obtain posts under government. 



chap, xxn ELEMENT AKY TEACHERS 275 

to some other post so as to create a vacancy for the man 
whom influence pushes upwards. The observance of this 
rule is secured by public sentiment, and especially by the 
strong corporate spirit of the service itself, which few min- 
isters would venture to offend. The permanent heads of 
the chief departments are men of proved capacity and high 
social standing. Their knowledge and experience are in- 
dispensable to every government; and, like British officials, 
they render loyal service to the government of the day, 
whatever their personal predilections. 

The salaries paid to the permanent civil servants are low 
in proportion to the cost of living, which had risen in France 
even before 1914; and it would be hard to secure adequate 
competence but for the widespread desire, extending even to 
the lower ranks in the official hierarchy, for that social im- 
portance which State employment confers. Complaints made 
relate chiefly to the routine and formally precise or bureau- 
cratic methods which prevail in France almost as much as in 
Germany. The deeply ingrained habit of obedience to of- 
ficial orders makes these methods endured more patiently 
than they would be among English-speaking men. The de- 
lays that occur in the working of the administrative machine 
are not altogether the fault of the permanent service, for it is 
the pressure exercised on ministers for favours that makes 
the local official await orders and shirk responsibility, since 
he fears to take any action which might interfere with his 
chief's desire to oblige. 

One branch of the Civil Service has an importance peculiar 
to France, viz. : that which consists of the teachers in ele- 
mentary schools, all of whom are appointed and may be dis- 
missed by the Executive. In the course of its conflict with 
the power of the clergy, the Republican party has by a series 
of statutes established lay teachers in every public school, and 
found in them powerful allies. They have organized them- 
selves in a sort of union, and recently sought, against the 
wishes of the Government, to join the General Labour Federa- 
tion in order to improve their pay and position. This in- 
subordination — as it is called by the chiefs — is not con- 
fined to the teachers. Others among the rank and file of the 
public employees ask to be allowed to agitate for higher pay 
and better conditions, arguing that by becoming employees 



276 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE pabt ii 

they do not cease to be citizens. The question that has arisen 
how far such action is compatible with the discipline (said 
to be already impaired in the Customs department) necessary 
for efficiency, is serious, and has raised trouble both in Great 
Britain and in Australia. In the villages the teacher is usu- 
ally the best-educated and best-informed layman, who adds to 
his influence over the pupils that influence which belongs to 
him as being (in most communes) the clerk to and adviser of 
the Maire. In the State secondary schools and universities 
no religious instruction is given ; but in these public opinion 
secures perfect freedom for the teachers, and no complaints 
are made regarding favouritism in appointments or the exer- 
cise of political control. 

In France the railroads nearly all belong to private com- 
panies, but recently one great system, that of the West, was 
taken over by the Government. Its management became 
more costly, and the inefficiency charged against it is used 
as an argument to meet the Socialist demand for the " na- 
tionalization " of all railroads. Few other " public utili- 
ties " have been undertaken by the State. It draws revenue 
from a monopoly of tobacco and matches. 

The chief local administrative official is the Prefect, a 
figure to whom there is no one to correspond in any English- 
speaking country nor in Switzerland. It is he who in each 
of the eighty-six departments represents the Government for 
civil purposes. 1 He is appointed, and may be removed, by 
the ministry at its discretion, no examination or other spe- 
cial qualification being required, since the post is a frankly 
political one. For his helpers and advisers he has a Prefec- 
tural Council, exercising a local jurisdiction over employees 
and minor administrative affairs; and under him there are 
Sub-Prefects also, appointed and removable by the ministry 
of the day, one for each arrondissement, of which there are in 
France 362. Through these functionaries a ministry car- 
ries out its wishes and fills most of the local posts, often con- 
sulting the Prefect, but (as already observed) chiefly in- 
fluenced by the deputy, who has latterly become the stronger 
through his political hold on the ministry. 

The rules of the permanent Civil Service forbid its mem- 

i Excluding Alsace-Lorraine which stands for the present outside. 



chap, xxn ADMINISTRATIVE LAW 277 

bers to take an active part in politics, but when they quietly 
work for ministerial candidates they need not fear its dis- 
approval. The Prefect and Sub-Prefect lie under no similar 
disability, and frequently go round with a Governmental 
candidate. 

Two other significant features of the French system must 
be here noted. One is the wide legislative power entrusted to 
ministers. Statutes are as a rule drawn up in general terms, 
leaving many details to be subsequently filled in. This hap- 
pens to some extent in the United Kingdom, but there the 
statute expressly delegates to the Sovereign in his Privy 
Council, or to high officials — as for instance to the council 
of judges of the Supreme Court, or to the Home Secretary — 
power to issue Orders or Rules for carrying out the purpose 
of the statute, which, if made within the limits prescribed, 
have the force of law. In France, however, ministers are 
competent without such special authorization (though this is 
sometimes conferred) to issue ordinances binding not only 
their subordinates in the administration but the citizens gen- 
erally. The more important of these are promulgated the 
name of the President, as Decrees. Minor matters are dealt 
with by various functionaries, not only individual ministers 
but Prefects, and even Maires as heads of communes. These 
are called arretes. The President's power extends to some 
slight extent even to the authorizing, in urgent cases, the 
borrowing of money (up to a certain limit) by the public 
treasury. 

The other feature, unknown to English-speaking men 
though not to several continental countries, is the recogni- 
tion of what is called Administrative Law. An official 
charged with some dereliction of duty, whether against his 
superiors or against a member of the public, is not liable, as 
in Britain or the United States, to be either sued or prose- 
cuted in the ordinary Courts for an act done in the course of 
his official work. Complaints must be brought before the 
Administrative Tribunals, which are constituted of officials, 
the jurisdiction of these bodies covering many matters with- 
drawn from the competence of the ordinary Courts. This 
system, an inheritance from the old monarchy, is defended as 
required by the principle of the division of powers into Legis- 



278 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE part 11 

lative, Executive, and Judicial. 1 To permit the ordinary 
Courts of Law to try a functionary for an administrative act 
would be, in French eyes, to allow the Judiciary to interfere 
with the Executive, so the very same doctrine which in Amer- 
ica secures the independence of the Judiciary from the Ex- 
ecutive is used in France to secure the independence of the 
Executive, nominally as against the Judiciary, but really as 
against the public, for the agents of the Executive thereby 
escape direct liability to the citizen, being themselves, through 
their special Courts, the judges not only of the facts of a 
case but also interpreters of the law to be applied. 

This rather undemocratic arrangement is an illustration 
of the width of the power wielded in France by an executive 
which is not only centralized but autocratic. Yet the exer- 
cise of power, since liable to be checked by the legislature, 
becomes uncertain in any particular case, for ministers, the 
creatures of a large and fluctuating body, exercise their pat- 
ronage at the wishes of the individual members of that body 
and hold their own places at the caprice of its collective ma- 
jority. With restricted functions their position would be 
more independent and more stable. But a strong executive 
is congenial to French ideas, and every government, be it 
republican or monarchical, feeling bound to maintain at all 
hazards its own form, has clung to a power which helps it to 
repress attempts at revolutionary change, supported by the 
feeling of the middle classes that public safety must be 
secured. 

A part of the administration which deserves mention, be- 
cause there is nothing analogous to it in any English-speaking 
country, is the Council of State. Founded by Napoleon, this 
useful and highly respected body consists of a number of 
eminent persons appointed and dismissible nominally by the 
President of the Republic, but practically by the ministry of 
the day, though it is in practice not frequently changed in 
composition. Its functions are to advise upon certain classes 
of ordinances and divers other matters of an administrative 
nature, and to sit as a final Court of Appeal from the de- 
cisions of administrative tribunals. This latter duty, which 
belongs only to one class of the councillors, seems to be now 

1 The system was on this ground maintained in the Constitution of 
1791. 



chap, xxn 



THE COUNCIL OF STATE 279 



the more important, for advice given on other matters need 
not be followed by the ministry. This Council has won the 
commendation of some English writers, who think that some 
similar institution might usefully be formed out of the 
British Privy Council. In France itself there are those who 
hold that it could well be used more largely than it is for the 
purpose of drafting or revising projects of legislation, and 
regret that the Ministry and the Chambers are too jealous 
of their own powers to share them with a nominated body. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

LOCAL GOVERNMENT 

It has already been pointed out that pro-Revolutionary 
France had no system of local institutions similar to those 
of England and the United States. Certain ancient rights 
of jurisdiction belonged to the noblesse; and local judiciaries 
existed in the Parlements of some of the greater provinces, 
but administration, civil and financial, had passed into the 
hands of the officers of the Crown. When the welter of the 
Revolution ended in 1799, Napoleon, in reconstructing the 
administrative system of Louis XIV., so strengthened it as to 
make the hand of the Central Government felt in every part 
of the country. There was no thought of creating local in- 
stitutions, still less of putting them upon a popular basis. 
France was cut up into Departments, on lines which in some 
cases ignored the old provinces. 1 The departments were 
artificial divisions, with no corporate tradition, such as still 
belong to English counties, and awakening no local patri- 
otism. Only one relic of antiquity remained in the rural 
Commune, a civil as well as an ecclesiastical unit, which, now 
that the severance of the Catholic Church from the State has 
extinguished its religious character, remains as the basis of 
civil organization. To it we shall return presently, when the 
larger unit of the Department has been described. 

Democratic principles require some sort of self-govern- 
ment, so in each Department there has been created an elected 
council, the Conseil General, chosen by universal suffrage, 
each canton returning one member who sits for six years, one- 
half of the whole Council being changed every three years. 
There are two sessions in each year, one lasting for a month, 
the other a fortnight. If an extra session is called, the sit- 

i Often, however, as in Normandy, Brittany, Gascony, Provence, a 
group of departments corresponds pretty closely with the ancient 
Province. 

280 



chap, xxin THE DEPARTMENTS 281 

tings must not exceed a week. Its taxing powers are strictly 
limited, and it can be dissolved by the Government, should it 
incur their displeasure. Its chief functions are the care of 
the departmental roads, a class of highways intermediate be- 
tween the national roads and the so-called " neighbourhood 
roads" (chemins vicinaux), as well as of the schools and 
asylums, and it can give subventions to railways. The nar- 
rowness of its sphere is due to the wide powers exercised by 
the Prefect as the agent of the Central Government. Not 
only does he appoint the departmental officials and manage 
the public institutions, dealing with many matters left in 
England or the United States to locally elected authorities, 
but his is the executive hand by which the decisions of the 
Council have to be carried out, and his power over the Coun- 
cil itself is considerable. It cannot take action without hav- 
ing received his report on the matter proposed to be dealt 
with. Its decisions on certain subjects can be annulled by 
the Central Government, whose approval is required for its 
tax levies, and for their appropriations to particular objects. 
Notwithstanding these limitations, there is considerable com- 
petition for seats on the Council, partly because they open a 
path to public life. The elections are fought upon the lines 
of national party, and thereby embittered. 1 Local would-be 
leaders find a field for making themselves known, and do so 
the more easily because the substantial citizens show little 
interest in the conduct of Departmental business. A statute 
of 1884 withdrew from the Councils, as liable to partisan- 
ship, a part of the control they had possessed over the affairs 
of the communes. 

The Arrondissement, which is the next largest local cir- 
cumscription, and was till 1919 the electoral area for the 
election of a deputy to the Chambers, also possesses a Coun- 
cil (members elected for six years) , but of slight importance, 
since it has neither revenues nor expenses of its own. So, 
too, the canton, a still smaller division for judicial and mili- 
tary purposes, need not concern us. 

Thus we arrive at the Commune, a local entity which is 

1 The fact that the Councils have a part in choosing the Senate has 
contributed to bring national politics into local elections. A like result 
followed in the United States from vesting the choice of the senators 
in those State Legislatures from which it has been now withdrawn. 



282 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE pabt ii 

over nearly the whole of Central and Western Europe the 
basis of rural life, bearing in Germany and German-speaking 
Switzerland the name of Gemeinde. It corresponds to the 
Town or Township of the Northern and Western States of 
America. In England it was represented by the Parish, but 
after the middle of the seventeenth century that area had 
little significance for non-ecclesiastical purposes, until a 
statute of 1894 created Parish Councils with some civil func- 
tions. English and American readers must, however, beware 
of thinking of a French Commune as if it were what they 
understand either by a Parish or by a Township. The Com- 
mune is just as much urban as rural. It is a municipality 
capable of holding property as a corporation, and may be as 
large as Paris or as small as an Alpine hamlet. It has a 
Communal Council, varying in size from ten to thirty-six 
members, unpaid, elected for four years by universal suf- 
frage, and themselves electing their Maire, 1 who, besides 
being the chairman, has administrative functions both as the 
agent of the Central Government, carrying out the directions 
of the Prefect, and as the executive in matters falling within 
the sphere of the Communal Council. In some of these mat- 
ters the Prefect can interfere to annul the acts of Maire or 
Council ; and he may suspend either, or both, from office for 
a month, while the Central Government can remove him and 
dissolve the Council altogether. Subject to this control the 
Council has a general management of local affairs, though 
official approval is required for the sale of communal prop- 
erty and nearly all other financial business. 2 

The Commune, or as we should say, Municipality, of Paris 
is specially regulated. It has a Council of eighty members, 
but the executive authority belongs partly to the Maires of 
its twenty arrondissements, who are appointed by the Central 
Government, partly to two high officials, the Prefect of the 
Seine and the Prefect of Police. Paris has been too for- 
midable a factor in the political life of France to be left to 
wander at its own sweet will. 

The Councils both of the Departments and of the large 

1 1 use the French name, because the word Mayor is to English and 
American readers indissolubly associated with a city or borough. 

2 Some of the smaller and poorer communes occasionally receive sub- 
ventions from the public treasury. 



chap, xxin THE COMMUNE 283 

urban Communes differ greatly in composition and in com- 
petence. In villages the Maire is said to be often imper- 
fectly educated and obliged to lean on the schoolmaster. It 
is alleged that in some large cities, especially where the So- 
cialists have captured the council, local demagogues have 
found their way into the councils by profuse promises of 
benefits to the poorer citizens, that rash experiments have 
been tried, the legal limits of taxation exceeded, heavy debts 
contracted, patronage misused in the interests of personal 
friends and parties, improper advantages, such as free tickets 
for theatres, given to the councillors. If such abuses have 
been tolerated by the Prefect or the Minister of the In- 
terior, this is ascribed to political motives, because the Ad- 
ministration may hesitate to quarrel with its friends. About 
the load of debts which presses many of the large municipali- 
ties — debts often contracted with little foresight, and some- 
times from electioneering motives — there is no doubt, but 
the other evils just mentioned do not seem to have spread 
widely. Serious scandals are rare, and have nowhere reached 
the dimensions of those, now less frequent than formerly, 
which have disgraced many North American cities. Honest 
city government has not been one of the great political prob- 
lems of France. There is probably some want of skill and 
of judgment, and a readiness to outstep the limits of the law 
in pursuing what are believed to be the interest of the masses, 
but peculation is seldom charged. Both French and Ger- 
man critics of democracy are so trenchant in their censure 
of the Parliamentary Republic that one cannot but sup- 
pose that where there is hardly any smoke there can be little 
fire. 

The reader may ask why in a country democratic in spirit 
and logical in pushing its principles to their conclusions so 
little has been done for local self-government. The sov- 
ereignty of the people is the corner-stone of the Republic. 
Why trust a nation of forty millions to deal with questions 
vital to national existence, and refuse to trust the inhabitants 
of departments or communes with the management of their 
local affairs, affairs in which a little mismanagement will not 
greatly matter ? 

The first answer is that the permanent Civil Service, a 
bureaucracy holding power and liking power, doing their 



284 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE pabt ii 

work well and believing that the people would not do it 
nearly so well, resist schemes of decentralization. 

The second answer is that ministers and deputies cling to 
the patronage by which the latter keep their hold on their 
constituents and the former can win the support of deputies. 

The third answer is that all who have ruled France since 
the Directory which Napoleon overthrew in 1799 have had 
to fear an insurrection which might change the form of gov- 
ernment, whether that form was a Monarchy or a Republic. 
" Self-preservation is the first law of life. Whatever hap- 
pens, the Monarchy, or the Empire, or the Republic (as the 
case may be) must be preserved. All the means needed for 
that supreme end must be used. The control of the whole 
administration of the country from the centre is such a means. 
We have it, we need it, we will keep it. It gives us the 
police as well as the army. It enables us to fill the local 
posts with our friends, safe men who will serve us at a 
pinch. It prevents local bodies which might be at a given 
moment disaffected, from becoming local centres of open re- 
sistance or secret conspiracy. If such bodies commanded 
large funds, or controlled the police, or were in any way 
strong and conspicuous enough to influence the masses of the 
people, they might be a danger. We must not give them the 
opportunity." 

Furthermore, the people of France have not asked for a 
larger measure of local self-government. They have no such 
dislike to being governed as used to exist, and to some extent 
exists still, in England and America; and they care much 
more for being governed well than for governing themselves. 
Political philosophers and practical political reformers, from 
Tocqueville eighty years ago to Taine in our own time, have 
held up to them the example of the United States as fit to be 
imitated. Novelists have told them that centralization has 
injured local social life as well as political life all over 
France. 1 They have listened unmoved, making no such de- 
mand as stirs a ministry to action. No political party could 
by carrying a full-blown scheme of self-government gain 
enough credit to compensate for the difficulties of the enter- 
prise, and for the troubles that might be expected before the 

i See, for example, a striking passage in Octave Feuillet's story, M. de 
Camor8, published as far back as the Second Empire. 






chap, xxin LOCAL GOVERNMENT 285 

people had learnt to use self-government wisely. There are 
those who tell the observer privately, though few would pro- 
claim it, that little could be gained by entrusting wide func- 
tions to communities most of which have not been fitted by 
history, and are not fitted by existing social conditions, to use 
those functions wisely, for the direction of affairs would be 
likely to fall into the hands of plausible demagogues or wily 
schemers, the motive forces would be self-interest tempered 
by fanaticism, predatory in some places, religious or anti- 
religious in others. Local self-government ought not to be 
given till the people have learnt to use it. Yet how will they 
learn to use it except by trying? This is the old problem 
which has always divided thinkers as well as politicians. 
Swimming can be learnt only by going into the water, but 
if you go in before you can swim you may be drowned. 
Those who know the history of Switzerland, America, and 
England do not deny the risk, but think it well worth taking. 
There has recently arisen a movement called Regionalism, 
aiming at the division of France into a number of large ad- 
ministrative governmental areas to be formed by grouping de- 
partments on geographical lines in accordance with their re- 
spective economic interests and historical traditions, and pro- 
posing to confer upon each such area a measure of local au- 
tonomy sufficient to relieve the Central Government of many 
functions. 1 Considerations already referred to may seem to 
recommend such a project, especially if accompanied by a 
scheme enlarging the scope of self-government in the exist- 
ing minor local divisions such as the Arrondissement. But 
the idea had not in 1920 so far won popular support as to 
make it probable that the legislature would give practical 
effect to it at a time when other grave questions were occupy- 
ing the public mind. 

i Seventeen such local divisions, each containing from 3 to 10 depart- 
ments, have been suggested. 



CHAPTEE XXIV 

PUBLIC OPINION 

What has been said in preceding pages regarding the 
history of France and its political parties may serve to ex- 
plain the characteristics of public opinion in France as com- 
pared with other democratic countries. 

Public opinion, as we have already seen, 1 is a better ruler, 
when its will can be ascertained, than is the ballot. But its 
rule works best when it is National, i.e. national in two 
senses of the word, as being the product of nearly the whole 
nation, irrespective of local divisions, and as possessing a 
certain unity and generality of colour and tendency which 
includes or overrides or mitigates the inevitable divisions of 
view created by the existence of social classes and political 
parties. Where each type of class opinion or party opinion 
is sharply opposed to other types, one can hardly talk of the 
public opinion of the country at large, so the statesman who 
desires to obey the national will is driven to estimate the 
respective strength of each type, treating them as conflicting 
forces, and to strike a sort of balance between them, accord- 
ing to their power of supporting or resisting a given policy. 

France is a large country, in which, strong as is the sense 
of national unity, marked differences of race and tempera- 
ment are still discernible. The men of the North-west are 
unlike those of the East and South-west, while both are un- 
like the passionate South-east and the more phlegmatic North- 
east. The Normans are almost a distinct type, but less so 
than the Basques. In economic conditions also there are con- 
trasts. Large estates remain in parts of the west and centre : 
in other regions the land belongs in small lots to the peasants. 
The population of the great manufacturing centres is as 
excitable as that of the quiet agricultural districts is sluggish 
and averse to change. 

France, moreover, resembles a region where volcanic forces 

i See Chapter XV. in Part I. 
286 



chap, xxiv PUBLIC OPINION 287 

have been recently active. Here and there the ground is 
seared by explosions. Deep chasms have opened : rumblings 
are heard which may betoken fresh eruptions. The passions 
roused in three revolutions are not extinct. The bitterness 
of the workman against the bourgeois is exceeded by that 
which rages between the friends and the enemies of the 
Church. Thus in France public opinion is more profoundly 
divided than in any other great State. Even in the smaller 
countries, like Ireland or Australia, one finds no parallel. 
In Great Britain, though there have been hot conflicts between 
the two great parties, there have always been many questions 
outside the party sphere; and there have been plenty of cit- 
izens who thought and voted with independence, shifting the 
balance from one party to another, according to their judg- 
ment on the issues prominent at the moment. An acute and 
dispassionate observer could, not indeed always, yet generally, 
tell the direction in which the national mind was moving. 
This is even more true of the United States * and of Switzer- 
land and of Canada. 

France presents another peculiar feature. In Britain and 
the United States, as in most free countries, it is chiefly the 
men who think, speak, and write that form public opinion. 
Though only a small minority of the population, they are not 
a class, but shade off imperceptibly into the general body of 
the nation, the bulk of which, though in very varying degrees, 
takes some interest in politics. And of those who do the 
thinking and the speaking, in the capital and all over the 
country, a comparatively small proportion are members of 
the legislature or otherwise directly occupied with political 
work. Still more is this the case in Switzerland, where 
everybody is expected to possess some sort of knowledge and 
show some sort of interest in public questions. Not so in 
France, according to the reports of most foreign observers, 
who declare that a large section of the population, especially 
in rural districts and in the smaller towns, cares little about 
politics unless when some question arises directly affecting 
their occupation, 2 and that many of those who vote at a gen- 

i In the United States one must of course except nearly all the 
coloured people and most of the recent immigrants, many of whom 
cannot speak English. 

2 Such as was the condition of vine-growing, which produced the angry 
demonstrations of the " viticoles " some years ago. 



288 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE pabt n 

eral election, because they are brought up to the polls, give 
so slight an attention to public matters that definite opinions 
cannot be attributed to them. Their local newspaper con- 
tains scarcely any political news. To them business, family 
affairs, and social pleasures cover the whole of life; so, 
though they count as possible voters, they do not count for 
the purpose of expressing (except almost mechanically at 
elections) a real popular will. 

Frenchmen, however, declare that the foreign observers re- 
ferred to exaggerate this apparent indifference. The peasant 
and the petit bourgeois does not wear his opinions upon his 
sleeve. Even when he has no clear and decided view on a 
particular question or the merits of a particular politician, 
he is governed by tendencies, generally persistent, as is 
shown by the constancy with which many electoral districts 
adhere from one generation to another to candidates of a par- 
ticular type, be it clerical, or moderate conservative, or that 
of the advanced republican parties. The election of 1919 is 
cited as indicating the existence of a large body of opinion 
which, alarmed by the attitude of the Extreme (or Socialist) 
Left, came to the polls in unusual strength, and swung back 
from the Left towards the Centre or the Right. Evidently 
these voters had been thinking. 

There is also a class important by its talents and influence 
rather than by its members, which eschews parliamentary 
politics. It consists of the men of letters and science, and 
includes most of the teachers in the universities and higher 
schools, as well as many of those who follow the learned pro- 
fessions. These men seem to stand more apart from the prac- 
tical political life of the country, both national and local, 
than does the corresponding class in Britain or Switzerland 
or the United States. They have, however, and they de- 
serve to have, a very real influence in the formation of opin- 
ion. They have knowledge and capacity, an admirable power 
of expression and a patriotic interest in the country's for- 
tunes. But they are (except the journalists) in little direct 
touch with the legislators, less than Englishmen of the same 
type would be, so their opinion, though powerful and re- 
spected, tells comparatively little, or at any rate not directly, 
on the conduct of affairs from session to session. 

Premising these facts, let us see what are the chief cur- 



chap, xxiv TYPES OF PUBLIC OPINION 289 

rents of political opinion in France. I have already enu- 
merated the parties in the two Chambers, and have indicated 
the four main types of which the parties are subdivisions. 
The first of these is the Catholic Legitimist, which cherishes 
the traditions of the old Monarchy and the Church as they 
stood in the days of Louis Quatorze. Though attached in 
theory to the ancient dynasty, nearly the whole of this sec- 
tion has ceased to hope for a Restoration. Tt is now much 
more Catholic than Legitimist, three-fourths at least of its 
adherents having accepted the Republic. Its real principle 
is attachment to Catholicism ; and the hostility shown by the 
more advanced Republicans to the clergy, even since the dis- 
establishment effected in 1903-5, gives it grounds for hold- 
ing together to defend religion. Most of its members do not 
seek to re-establish the Church, but would be content with a 
reasonable concordat, the recognition of a place for the teach- 
ing Orders in the instruction of the people, and the cessation 
of the present anti-Catholic intolerance. Respectable by its 
sincerity and by the social influence it can still put forth, it 
is not a force of the first order, except in some parts of the 
West and North, 1 and in the army, chiefly among the officers. 
Such authority as men of a second type of opinion exert, 
springs rather from the eminence than from the numbers of 
those in whom it is embodied. These are the moderate Re- 
publicans, whose ideal, influential in 1848-49 and again in 
1870-75, of a conservative Republic, upholding the rights of 
property, repressing attempts at disorder, and carefully hus- 
banding the national revenue, has lost favour in France. It 
has still some distinguished literary exponents and the sym- 
pathy of a large part of the cultivated bourgeoisie; but ita 
force, scanty if we regard the votes it can command, is felt 
chiefly in the unseen restraint which it imposes, largely 

i An extremely interesting study of the political character of the 
western and north-western parts of France may be found in the book 
of M. Andre Siegfried, Tableau politique de la France, and some valu- 
able articles on the same subject by the Count de Calan have appeared 
in the Revue politique de VEcole Libre des Sciences politiques during 
recent months. The persistence of political attitude since 1789 shown 
by constituencies in the south-west, north-west, and south-east of France 
is remarkable. There is more changefulness in the Central regions. It 
is to be wished that some British student would undertake a like local 
enquiry into the political proclivities of British counties and cities, and 
the causes thereof. 

VOL. I U 



290 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES: FRANCE pabt n 

through the official class, upon projects of rash change. It 
has even a certain distant tenderness for the Church, less 
from religious sympathy than from a sense that religion ex- 
erts a steadying influence. It acquiesces in the existing Con- 
stitution, fearing that something worse might follow were 
that to be tampered with, but it disapproves the methods by 
which deputies and ministers work the system, and recoils 
from some of their proposals. 

No sharp line can so far as respects specific articles of 
political faith be drawn between these Moderates and the 
third main type composed of the more numerous Advanced 
Eepublicans of the Left. But there is a difference of temper 
and tendency. The Radical school of opinion professes more 
faith in the masses, and is committed to semi-socialistic ex- 
periments planned in their interest. It looks back to 1791- 
93 as the Moderates look back to 1789-90, and cherishes the 
memories of the revolutions in which Paris overthrew four 
monarchies in succession. If any one type of opinion can be 
said to dominate the country it is this, for it is strong in the 
east and south and in most parts of the centre. 

Finally, there is Socialist opinion. Of those who profess 
it, some are more, some less, attached to the doctrines of 
Proudhon or to those of Karl Marx, some more ready than 
others to resort to the general strike and even to violence. 
But all agree in desiring an economic reconstruction of so- 
ciety upon a collectivist or communistic basis. Many, prob- 
ably most, of the leaders are not themselves hand-workers, but 
literary or professional men. Though the Socialists, being 
the best organized and best disciplined of all the parties, may 
be deemed a well-defined body, socialist opinions are not con- 
fined to that organized party, and the more advanced Radical 
views melt into those of the less advanced Socialists. While 
many Radicals are permeated by collectivist doctrine, not a 
few eminent Socialists have from time to time quitted the 
party to enrol themselves in the Radical ranks, either modify- 
ing their former views or recognizing that the time has not 
arrived for translating theory into practice. 

Let it be noted that all the sections of the Republican Left, 
whatever their differences, have a bond of union in their 
hostility to Clericalism, and therefore to Monarchy which 



chap, xxiv TYPES OF PUBLIC OPINION 291 

they associate with Church power. This is the dividing line 
that goes deepest. 

Besides these various schools of political thought, a tend- 
ency has now and then emerged which is not so much a 
Doctrine or Programme as a manifestation of discontent with 
the existing system of government. A few sentences may 
serve to explain its origin. 

When Louis Napoleon's coup d'etat overthrew the Second 
Kepublic in 1852, he hastened to legalize his position by ask- 
ing for, and obtaining, a plebiscite or popular vote of the 
whole nation, — for universal suffrage then already existed, — 
by which he was chosen President for ten years. A similar 
vote taken in 1852 made him Emperor, the majorities being 
large on both occasions. Many Frenchmen have been capti- 
vated by the notion of a popular dictatorship, a government 
by one man, democratic in its source, because it springs 
straight from universal suffrage, but uncontrolled in its exer- 
cise, because not dependent on the favour of a legisla- 
ture. Despite the calamities which the Second Empire 
brought upon France, this idea kept alive a large party, 
which called itself Bonapartist, and commanded many votes 
in the Chamber down till the death of Louis Napoleon's son 
in 1879. Thereafter the party declined, there being no rep- 
resentative of the family whose personal merits recommended 
him as its standard-bearer, and for many years past candi- 
dates for the Chamber have ceased to offer themselves as 
Bonapartists. But the type of doctrine, the tendency which 
prefers not a constitutional monarchy but a popular dictator- 
ship to the rule of a legislature, has persisted as a protest 
against Parliamentarism, cherishing a desire to strengthen the 
Executive, whether by conferring greater powers on the 
President or by setting up some new kind of authority 
through which the country, delivered from the intrigues of 
the Chamber, may stand stronger and more united in the 
face of foreign foes. It was this tendency which, suddenly 
developing with unsuspected force, made a hero of General 
Boulanger, who was supposed to have in him the makings 
of a dictator. It reappeared in the days of the Dreyfus con- 
flict, when the anti-Semites and the rich and the timid clam- 
oured for strong government, Never definitely embodied in 



292 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE past n 

a party, it has gained support from every quarter in which 
there was discontent. Monarchists favoured it: Clericals 
welcomed it, and so did a large section of the army, of which 
it frequently proclaimed itself the champion. It drew votes 
from a section of the Radicals, even from a section of the So- 
cialists. Blossoming into a party, it took the name of Na- 
tionalist, but as it found no leader who could be put forward 
as a candidate for the Presidency, much less for an avowed 
dictatorship, it presently withered and subsided as an or- 
ganization. Yet the tendency remains, for it is on its prac- 
tical side an inevitable reaction against the faults of " Par- 
liamentarism," and on its theoretical side an expression of 
democratic faith in universal suffrage and the direct action of 
the people through the man of their choice. It finds vent 
in the proposals frequently launched for enlarging the powers 
of the President, so as to give him a leadership and authority 
independent of his ministers. It has to be reckoned with as 
a real, though a variable and unpredictable force. How far 
the experiences of the Great War will affect it remains to be 
seen. None of the military chiefs who won fame in that war 
has sought to turn his influence to any political purpose. 

Through what organs do these types of opinion express 
themselves, and how is their respective strength to be gauged ? 
All are represented in the two Chambers. All appeal to the 
public through the press, and by meetings, though these are 
less frequent, excite less interest, and play (except in the 
great cities) a smaller part in public affairs than popular 
gatherings do in Britain or America. It is naturally the 
more numerous and the more advanced parties, especially 
Radicals and Socialists, who make most, and the Conservative 
Republicans who make least use of popular demonstrations. 
An army moving to the attack will shout or sing : that which 
stands still stands silent. 

All these types have their exponents in the newspaper press, 
of which, as being both an index and a moulder of opinion, 
some words must be said. 

The French Press presents forms of excellence and forms 
of turpitude more extreme than can be found in other great 
countries. The worst journals live by blackmailing and 
other base arts. The best reach a dignity of manner not sur- 
passed and a perfection of literary expression hardly equalled 



chap, xxiv PUBLIC OPINION: THE PRESS 293 

elsewhere. Their articles may not contain more knowledge 
and thought than did two or three of the ablest newspapers 
of Vienna, of Buda Pest, and of Germany, but they are better 
written, the French language being singularly adapted to this 
form of literature, for which the ablest French pens of the 
last hundred years created an admirable tradition. In these 
best newspapers one finds a wide outlook, a philosophic in- 
sight, a familiarity with the politics of other European coun- 
tries, and a felicity of phrase which have rarely, if ever, been 
found combined in the press of any capital save Paris. 

This is an old characteristic: two other features of the 
French Press are more recent. One is the business charac- 
ter which the newspapers of the largest circulation have as- 
sumed. They are great commercial enterprises, returning 
immense profits to their owners, and it is the profits that 
come first in the minds of their owners. Nowadays a news- 
paper lives by advertisements rather than by circulation, so 
it becomes necessary to secure advertisements. Circulation 
is desired because it draws the advertiser. These things be- 
ing so, the owner is obliged both to propitiate that part of 
the business world whence advertisements come, and to avoid 
whatever is likely to reduce his circulation by offending any 
large body of readers. Hence — so it is alleged — a great 
journal cannot to-day show so much independence as for- 
merly. Some one has said, " When the opinions of a journal 
begin to count, it ceases to have opinions." There are other 
ways in which newspapers are subject to influences. They 
like to stand well with the powers that be in the world of 
commerce and finance. They desire the latest, most exact, 
and most secret political news from abroad. Since this is in 
the gift of the Government, one must be on good terms with 
the Government in order to have it. A tacit understanding 
with ministers suits both parties, for ministers, when they 
obtain press goodwill, have a guarantee against attack, im- 
perfect, no doubt, yet worth something, while the journal gets 
what helps its circulation. It is good policy to receive the 
proprietor or editor when he asks an interview, and to take 
reporters around in the special train when the President goes 
on a tour. The deputies follow suit, and confide to the news- 
paper such news as they can impart. Even the judicial 
bench seeks praise from the press. 



294 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE past n 

While noting the ahove facts, generally true as regards the 
influence of newspapers in the country and at normal times 
— so far as any times can be called normal — another fact 
also is to be remembered. The small circle of persons who 
in Paris habitually occupy themselves with politics, i.e. with 
ministerial intrigues and changes, with gossip about foreign 
affairs, and with schemes for reaping pecuniary crops on that 
field where business and politics meet — this small crowd of 
ministers and deputies, with the buzzing swarm that sur- 
rounds ministers and deputies, is much influenced by the 
Parisian newspapers, especially at the arrival of a minis- 
terial crisis. A scathing article may destroy the chances of 
an aspirant or wreck a possible combination. The incisive 
skill of French journalism which inflicted such wounds on 
Napoleon III. in his palmiest days, shows itself at these 
moments with unabated force. It permits itself much li- 
cence, but without that licence many truths which need to be 
told might remain unspoken. 

These phenomena are not confined to France. Similar 
causes have been producing them everywhere. More pe- 
culiar to France is the ownership of a journal by some emi- 
nent politician, who writes in it or uses it as his organ, so 
that it gives currency to his views and becomes identified with 
his plans and aspirations. This is fairer to the public than 
a secret league between a newspaper and a minister, who is 
expected to reward it (as happens in some other countries) 
by an appointment or the bestowal of an honour. The open 
advocacy of the views of a particular statesman, or group, 
by his or its newspaper, supplies to some extent the decline in 
the freedom and earnestness with which politics are handled 
in the most widely circulated journals, which would appear 
to be to-day less purely political than they were thirty or 
forty years ago. As financial interests have grown more pow- 
erful and financiers have thrown their tentacles over politics, 
those newspapers which finance can use have in losing inde- 
pendence lost much of their value, both as critics and as 
leaders. 1 

It must not, however, be forgotten that the influence of 

i Not a few journals, even among those of importance, are believed 
to have succumbed to the wiles of " interests," foreign or domestic, but 
the truth of these allegations is not easily ascertained. 



chap, xxiv PUBLIC OPINION: THE PKESS 295 

the Parisian press, which alone most foreigners see, great as 
it is in and in a circle around the capital, declines rapidly 
when that point in the circle is reached where it is the local 
newspapers that the householder reads before the day's work 
begins. Cities like Lyons and Nantes, Bordeaux and Mar- 
seilles, have powerful and well-written journals which escape 
some of the temptations that beset the capital. They follow 
the proceedings of the legislature closely and, like the news- 
papers of Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Scotland, 
deal effectively with general as well as local issues. It is 
often said that both these leading provincial papers and their 
readers take politics more seriously than do the Parisians. 

Men ask in France whether it is the press that guides pub- 
lic opinion or public opinion that guides the press. Both 
processes go on, but the ability of a journalist is shown, not 
so much in following and heightening the sentiment of the 
moment as in presaging the course which any sentiment is 
just beginning to take, and heading his ship that way before 
his rivals. 

The type of opinion which most needs the help of the press 
is the Conservative Republican, because though strong in in- 
tellectual resources it is weak in numbers and organization. 
The stranger who admires it as literature is apt to overesti- 
mate its influence. In reality neither its organs nor those of 
the extreme schools already enumerated (always excepting 
the Socialist papers read by Socialist workmen) reach the 
masses of the people. But there are papers read by them, 
and especially those read by the rural voter, which do not 
make politics their main concern, since it is not for their 
politics that men buy them. Local affairs, agricultural af- 
fairs, conspicuous crimes, and what are called faits divers 
form the staple of their news. The proceedings of the Cham- 
bers, scantily reported in nearly all journals, are in these 
barely adverted to, so when an important speech is delivered 
by a Minister which the majority in the Chamber desires to 
bring before the people, it is printed on a broadsheet and 
sent down to all the communes, to be pasted up on the wall of 
the Mairie to be read by the good citizen. Whether the good 
citizen spends much time in perusing it there may be doubted. 
I have never seen him so engaged. These things seem to 
show that the press, or at any rate the Parisian press, is no 



296 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE part n 

sure index to the views or probable action of tbe agricultural 
electors. 

How, then, is opinion formed? Among the industrial 
workers of the towns largely by the Radical or Socialist 
press which developes, as events occur, views of the type its 
readers already hold. To some extent, among the upper sec- 
tion of the professional and commercial class, by one or more 
of the leading journals of the capital, and among the middle 
or poorer sections of the bourgeoisie generally, by talk in 
the cafes of the town where they live, or perhaps at their 
clubs (cercles), for the French, being a sociable people, spend 
more of their evenings in one another's company than do the 
English or the Americans, and if they care at all about 
politics, discuss current events eagerly. Opinion seems to be 
formed more than in England by talk and less by the printed 
page, though of course each man's paper supplies the facts, 
or its version of the facts, upon which the discussions of the 
cafe proceed. The power of any single newspaper over its 
readers may be less than it has often been in England and in 
Australia. But the press can probably do more than it could 
in those countries to disparage or discredit a politician whom 
it seeks to ruin, for the French public is suspicious, apt to 
presume some foundation for charges positively brought, 
while the law of libel is notoriously ineffective where politics 
are concerned. Able and judicious as are some of the news- 
papers in each of the great provincial cities, the capital has 
been the chief factory in which political opinion is made. 
Though Goethe was fond of dwelling on the immense value 
of Paris as the meeting-place of philosophers, writers, and 
artists, it might be better for the country to have independ- 
ent centres of political thought such as Germany has had, and 
as are guaranteed to America by her vast extent. They give 
to opinion a greater variety, and tend to soften the asperities 
of conflicts waged too exclusively on the same parliamentary 
battlefield. 

Returning to the main issue, we have to ask how far public 
opinion, as compared with the legislative and executive ma- 
chinery of government, is fit to direct the domestic and for- 
eign policy of France. In the United States and Switzerland 
public opinion rules. To a less degree it rules in England 
also. Does it rule in France ? 



chap, xxiv PUBLIC OPINION 297 

France differs from these three countries in two ways. 
In all of them a large majority of the voters are interested 
in public affairs, so a statesman of insight can usually dis- 
cover the general trend of their views and wishes, even when 
he cannot predict precisely the result of an election, for many 
secondary questions affect different sets of voters. Opinion 
is so widely diffused among the more passive sections as well 
as among the more active, that it can be tolerably well tested 
in all classes. It is in the air which men breathe. But in 
France a somewhat larger section of the voters have few 
positive opinions, but are moved rather by tendencies, 
grounded on habit or a vague sense of their own interests, 
or on a feeling for or against the Church or the chateau, or 
on a dislike of the bourgeoisie. Such tendencies, even when 
they determine their permanent attitude to a party, do not 
necessarily prescribe their votes on every current issue, some 
of which may not affect personal interests or appeal to reli- 
gious proclivities. 

On the other hand, that part of the French people which, 
holding definite views, cares for and watches public affairs, 
is sharply divided into different schools of thought and (less 
sharply) into political parties. The extreme schools differ 
on fundamentals, even on the form of government and the 
economic structure of society. Thus when we take all these 
schools and groups in the aggregate, we find in them no gen- 
eral public opinion, but rather a congeries of dissident opin- 
ions, incapable of being brought into harmony. It is an 
orchestra of clashing instruments. So sharp is the clashing 
that, whereas in America and England one can reckon on a 
disposition to acquiesce in the decision of the majority once 
that decision has been given, one cannot so reckon in France. 
The will which an election reveals may remain the will of the 
strongest factions only, not of the nation as a whole. The 
statesman has to keep his eye on the conflicting parties as 
abiding factors and calculate their present or prospective 
strength. He cannot make a national harmony out of the dis- 
cordant notes and try to sing in tune. To this, however, 
there is the one exception, which I have already mentioned. 
On the main lines of foreign policy there has been a truly 
national public opinion. Differences of course there must 
be as to the prudence of any particular diplomatic step. 



298 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES: FRANCE part n 

Differences there were before the war as to the extent of the 
military precautions required; but these differences rarely 
weakened the Executive in its conduct of foreign relations. 
Pride and patriotism imposed silence on factions. 

Secondary issues are, however, too much left to the Cham- 
bers and the group of political journalists who manufacture 
opinion in Paris. Here, as in England, the knowledge of 
foreign affairs and the interest felt in them have been too 
slender to enable the people to hold in check the schemes of 
adventurers pressing for the assumption of responsibilities 
abroad, and to exercise that control over foreign policy which 
is needed for the doing of justice and the maintenance of 
peace. The journals and coteries of Paris are in this sphere 
not sufficiently restrained by the opinion of the provinces. 

It may help the reader to comprehend the peculiarly com- 
plicated phenomena of France if I try to present the forces 
and influences at work on politics in yet another form of 
classification, enumerating six classes or sets of citizens of 
most importance. 

First come the peasantry, more than half of the total num- 
ber of voters, knowing little, and often caring little about 
politics, but, shrewd in their way, thrifty almost to excess, 
and of a conservative temper. 

Secondly, the working men in cities and other great indus- 
trial centres. Knowing more and caring more about public 
matters than do the peasants, but also regarding them chiefly 
from the side of their own interests, they are not generally 
revolutionists, but. eager for changes that promise to better 
their condition. 

Thirdly, the commercial sections of the middle classes, 
forming the great bulk of the bourgeoisie, thinking first of 
their business, valuing the stability of institutions, and, like 
their peasant neighbours, suspicious of novelties. 

Fourthly, the professional classes, who while in one sense 
a part of the bourgeoisie, are more generally highly educated 
men, many of them occupied with letters or science, well 
qualified and disposed to take a lively interest in politics both 
foreign and domestic. 

Fifthly. Across and through all these classes and the ma- 
terial interests by which each of them is moved, strikes the 
influence of religion and the Catholic Church, an influence 



OHAt. x^iv PUBLIC OPINION 2$9 

whose appeal to tradition and emotion is capable, at moments, 
of thrusting aside or overriding all considerations of material 
interest — the peasant's passion for the land, the bourgeois' 
love of a quiet life, the intellectual detachment of the scholar 
or man of science. Among the workers also there are those 
over whose capacity for idealism socialistic doctrines can 
exercise a power like that of religion. 

Lastly there are the plutocrats of finance and industry, 
insignificant in number, but strong by the influence which 
wealth always confers, and which it here exerts, chiefly in 
secret, through the press. There are, probably, among them 
some disinterested patriots, but, taken as a whole, they are 
more distinctly " out for themselves first, last, and all the 
time," than any other section of the community, and this 
concentration of effort on a single definite end is one of the 
sources of the power of wealth, apparently greater in France 
than anywhere else in the world. 



CHAPTER XXV 



THE TONE OF PUBLIC LIFE 



This survey of the persons by whom France is ruled and 
of the methods which deputies, ministers, and officials are 
wont to employ, needs to be completed by a few words on 
public life as a whole, its purity and its general tone. All 
that foreign observers have said in censure of the two former 
classes has been surpassed in acrimony by critics who are 
themselves Frenchmen. The stranger who seeks to discover 
the truth from books and newspapers feels bound to discount 
much of what native writers say about their countrymen, 
as due to that warmth of partisan feeling which has for forty 
years been more intense here than elsewhere in Europe. 
Some faults, moreover, which belong to politics in all coun- 
tries, and were at least as evident under the three preceding 
monarchies, are now held up to scorn as if peculiar to the 
present regime. But how much, then, are we to discount 
the sum total of the iniquities charged against the Third 
Republic? I have tried to correct the exaggerations of po- 
litical polemics by the opinions of impartially minded French 
friends, but while the conclusions to be here stated seem to 
me generally true, it is with the greatest diffidence that I sub- 
mit them. 

Let us begin with the ordinary citizen. Is his vote at an 
election purchasable? The Commissions which investigate 
these matters take evidence laxly, and the Chamber is influ- 
enced in its decisions by party motives. But the upshot 
seems to be that the giving and receiving of bribes is rare. 
Few candidates can afford to spend money in this way; and 
though here, as in other countries, the voter may see little 
harm in making something out of his vote, the process is too 
costly to be often employed in the large constituencies uni- 
versal suffrage has created. 

As respects members of the Legislature and Ministers, for 

300 



chap, xxv TONE OF THE CHAMBERS 301 

these classes may be considered together, it is especially hard 
to speak positively. The resounding explosion of the Pan- 
ama affair, in which it was proved that immense sums had 
been diverted from the making of the Canal to private gains, 
and that some of these had gone to purchasing support in the 
Chamber, possibly from a few ministers and certainly from 
some deputies, created an atmosphere of suspicion which 
lasted for years, like the smoke that continues to hang over 
the spot where a high explosive shell has struck the ground. 
A scandal so tremendous seemed to confirm the vague sus- 
picions that had existed before : and it tended to render prob- 
able charges subsequently made. That very few persons were 
ultimately convicted scarcely diminished the effect, because 
it was known that some of the accused had escaped justice, 
either for want of evidence or through official connivance, and 
no one could be sure how many these might be. Nothing 
similar has occurred since, yet the memory of Panama has 
remained to be used as a reproach against Parliamentary gov- 
ernment, even by those who know that there were scandals 
in the days of Louis Philippe, when the intellectual char- 
acter of the Chamber stood high, and more numerous scan- 
dals in the eighteen years' reign of Napoleon III. than the 
Republic has seen during the last fifty. 

That there are some corruptible members of the Legis- 
ture is probable. Such men are to be found in every large 
assembly, though in a few the standard of probity has been 
kept so high that they seldom venture to affront it. Some 
sources of temptation are absent. Those private Bills, pro- 
moted in the interests of some commercial or industrial en- 
terprise, or granting a valuable concession of public rights 
to private undertakings, which are the chief source of cor- 
ruption in American legislatures, scarcely exist in Prance. 
Pew new railroads have been constructed of late years : few 
projects are brought forward which affect business men suffi- 
ciently to make it worth their while to approach legislators. 
Those who seek their own interests in the imposition or re- 
duction of protective duties on imports generally pursue their 
aims openly. Nevertheless it does happen that large finan- 
ciers, or firms desiring to develop undertakings abroad, as 
for instance in Turkey, or in the colonies, do attempt to 
bring improper influences to bear: and sometimes they sue- 



302 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES: FRANCE pabt n 

ceed. Persons who ought to know assure me that the per- 
centage of purchasable deputies is trifling, but that a good 
many are not above using their position for gainful pur- 
poses, as an advocate may extend his practice by his posi- 
tion in the Chamber, or as a deputy can profit by indirectly 
helping a commercial company. Some evidence of the anx- 
iety which the connection of senators and deputies with busi- 
ness undertakings has been causing may be found in the bills 
introduced to declare certain positions incompatible with that 
of a legislator. The provisions of the existing law declare 
the ineligibility for a seat of any one who exercises a public 
function paid by State funds (with a very few exceptions 
for Ministers and others), of any one who is a member of a 
" Commission Departmentale," or of a Conseil General, and 
of a director of three great steam-packet companies which 
hold postal service concessions from the Government. It was 
proposed by a bill of 1917 to extend this ineligibility to per- 
sons discharging either any function paid by the funds of the 
State, or of a Department, or of a Commune, or of a Colony, 
or any function to which a person may be nominated by the 
State in any financial, industrial, or commercial company or 
enterprise; and the bill would also forbid members of either 
Chamber, Ministers, and Under Secretaries of State to take 
part in any bargain or adjudication to which the State, or 
departments, or communes are parties in respect of work to 
be done or goods to be supplied. One can conjecture the 
evils at which such provisions as these are aimed. 

The name of a deputy on the directorate of an incorporated 
company has lost what value it once possessed, because con- 
fidence has been shaken. A deputy may possibly, and a 
minister will usually, know facts enabling him to speculate 
in stocks with a prospect of success, and the opinion of his 
fellow-members deals leniently with this form of what is 
called tripotage. Though it is thought unbecoming for a 
politician to be mixed up with business matters, a slur on his 
reputation does not shut the door of office against him. The 
deputies and ministers who lack private fortune are not 
those round whom suspicion most frequently hovers, nor has 
the receipt of a salary lowered the moral standard, except in 
so far as it creates a further motive for giving an uncon- 
scientious vote in order to retain a seat. Public opinion is 



chap, xxv TONE OF CIVIL SERVICE 303 

sensitive on the subject of pecuniary gains by politicians: 
it is only a talent which approaches indispensability that ob- 
tains impunity for transgressors. When stories are pro- 
fusely circulated censoriousness tends to defeat itself, because 
if many accusations are made and remain unproved, people 
begin to treat the subject lightly, giving weight only to a 
few charges, and not troubling themselves to discriminate 
between the rest, for in despair of reaching the truth they 
cease to probe matters to the bottom. 

A singularly fair-minded French observer, who tells me 
that during the last forty years the intellectual level of the 
deputies has slightly risen, while their moral level has slightly 
fallen, attributes this to two causes which have little to do 
with politics. The diffusion of higher education among the 
middle and lower middle and even the wage-earning classes 
has enabled a larger proportion than formerly of able men 
of humble origin to enter Parliament. Such men are less 
responsive to the standards set by a highly cultivated society 
because they have never belonged to it. They have brought 
with them less polished manners and less refined tastes, and 
they represent that new spirit which, pursuing merely ma- 
terial aims, is indifferent to religious or philosophical prin- 
ciples, a spirit which, though deemed characteristic of the 
generation that has grown up under the Republic, is not 
necessarily due to the Republic. There was plenty of irre- 
ligion and of licence, as well as plenty of corruption, under 
the Second Empire. The philosophic enthusiasts who cham- 
pioned liberty against Louis Napoleon believed that the Re- 
public would bring purer morals and a loftier public spirit. 
But these things the Republic has not yet brought. 

As respects the public departments, it has been already 
observed that their management has been on the whole honest 
and efficient. The branch in which lavish expenditures, with 
inadequate results, have most frequently occurred is the 
navy, but in all countries jobs or peculations may be looked 
for where large contracts are placed. Even the admirably 
organized and strictly disciplined public service of Germany 
has not been exempt. The eagerness to concentrate fire upon 
Parliamentarism may dispose French critics to spare their 
Civil Service, but certainly one hears few charges brought 
against its members.* They have a pride in their work and 



304 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FEANCE pabt n 

a sense of professional solidarity which makes the upper 
ranks of the service at any rate feel that every man is the 
guardian of the honour of the profession as well as of his 
own. 

The same may be said of the Judiciary. It is above pe- 
cuniary seductions. Yet the statements heard from many 
quarters, that judges are sometimes affected by political in- 
fluences, proceeding either from the government, or from per- 
sons in touch with the government, cannot be disregarded. 
On the other hand, cases are quoted in which governments 
have demanded from the judges what the latter have refused 
to give. It would seem that though little harm may have so 
far resulted there is need for watchfulness. Public opinion 
is perhaps too tolerant of attempts to affect the impartiality 
and independence of the Bench. The habit of writing letters 
to judges about cases that come before them is a dangerous 
one, and the practice of promoting judges from lower to 
higher posts creates temptations, since it provides a motive 
for trying to stand well with the Government. 1 Some pro- 
motions of course there must be. They exist in England, 
where the most capable High Court judges of first instance 
are raised to the Court of Appeal, and in the United States, 
where District and Circuit judges are sometimes sent to the 
Supreme Court. But in both these cases the public opinion 
of the Bar, from which all judges are taken, provides a safe- 
guard against favouritism. As French judges are not drawn 
from the Bar, it knows less of them and takes less interest 
in their careers. 

When we come to what is called the Tone of public life 
it is still harder to form a correct estimate. What does the 
term mean ? It can be felt rather than described, being 
something whose presence is, like a scent, impalpable but un- 
mistakable. It is a quality in the atmosphere, delightful 
when it stimulates, depressing when it lowers intellectual or 

i A veteran statesman, candidate for the Senate, describing himself as 
" ni liberal ni progressiste, ni radical ni socialiste," but " tout simple- 
ment republicain," wrote in November 1911 as follows: to the electors 
" Trouvez-vous que la justice soit assez ind£pendante, l'armee assez pro- 
tegee contre les influences politiques, la masse grossissante de nos fonc- 
tionnaires est-elle assez pengtree du sentiment de la discipline ? Le scep- 
ticisme et l'apathie des citoyens paisibles ne font-ils pas de redoutables 
progres, et l'audace impunie des autres? . . . Vous sentez-vous assez 
gouvernes ? " 



chap, xxv TONE AND TRADITION 305 

moral vitality. It is open-minded, free from prejudice and 
intolerance, governed by the love of truth. It is also imag- 
inative and emotional, feeling the greatness of a nation's life, 
gladly recognizing the duty and the privilege of serving the 
State. It is patriotic in that sense of the word which implies 
that a nation ought to aim at righteousness as well as at 
power. Even in ambitious men it restrains the promptings 
of mere self-interest. It insists that those to whom the peo- 
ple have given their trust as representatives or as officials, 
should show themselves worthy of a nation's best traditions, 
sets a high standard for those who come forward as leaders, 
expects from them not only good taste and decorum, but also 
honour and a respect for one another's honour, requires them 
not only to apply the principle of noblesse oblige to them- 
selves, but also to assume that opponents are to be treated 
with respect till they show themselves unworthy. Whoever 
has sat for many years in a representative assembly comes 
to know what its " tone " is by noting what acts or words it 
permits or condemns, what persons it admires or distrusts, 
and he learns how to discriminate between the tone of one 
parliament and another, as an ozonometer might be used to 
test the health-giving quality of air on a hilltop or in a 
swamp. 

" Tone " in this sense is formed partly by tradition, which 
has by long observance set up a standard whereto public men 
are expected to conform, partly by the number and weight 
in the political life of a country of those who, admitted to 
be above all mendacity or treachery in the relations of private 
life, carry the same sense of honour into their public action. 
Such men are found in every class and every social stratum. 
They are also wanting in every class, in the socially highest 
as well as those who would be called the humblest. But as 
it is those of social standing who are most easily made amen- 
able to the opinion of their own class and to the standards 
that class recognizes, it is an advantage to a country when 
such men, possessing also the intellectual gifts which make 
them eminent, are numerous in its public life, *for they are 
obliged to respect the rules of conduct imposed by the society 
in which they move. 

The political atmosphere in which French politicians live 

is not easily described. Everywhere in the world divergent 
vol. i x 



306 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE past n 

views are expressed regarding the morals and manners of 
public men, and veterans are prone to note and lament a 
decline. But in France the vehemence of partisanship makes 
the divergence specially marked, for those who dislike the 
present political system begin by decrying its products. 
What does seem tolerably clear is that the public men of to- 
day, and especially the deputies, receive less respect and 
deference than did their predecessors in the first ten years of 
the Third Republic. The dignity of the Chamber has sunk. 
Vituperation abounds ; injurious charges are bandied to and 
fro, and seem, because so frequent, to be little resented. The 
odour of intrigue, never absent from any legislature in any 
country, seems rank in the Palais Bourbon, 1 and the talent 
for intrigue counts for as much as does oratory or adminis- 
trative capacity. A man universally distrusted may be 
among the busiest in contriving combinations to oust succes- 
sive ministries in the hope that before long his own turn of 
office will arrive. Whether it is better to have or to want 
that hypocrisy which has been described as the tribute Vice 
pays to Virtue, is a question often debated. Here, at any 
rate, there is little of it. Yet corruption, judicially proved, 
does exclude a man from office, and the possession of a stately 
and unblemished character commands authority as well as 
respect. Even those who do not imitate can admire. 

A minister who goes touring in the provinces is welcomed 
with external marks of deference far exceeding those that 
would be offered to a British or an American official of equal 
rank, for in France authority is honoured. But the indi- 
vidual man who holds the authority may not receive at other 
times the confidence and respect of his fellow-citizens. He 
is assailed — even Presidents have been assailed — in lan- 
guage rare in America and unknown in Switzerland, rare 
even in England, where personal attacks have been latterly 
more malignant than they were seventy years ago. Though 
the conception of the State as a supreme and all-embracing 
power may inspire in France a sort of awe unknown in those 
countries, and posts under the State are more eagerly sought, 
the fact of serving it does not implant a higher sense of re- 
sponsibility and duty. There are a few religious idealists 
and a few Socialist idealists, but apart from these and from 
i The building in which the Chamber sits. 



chap, xxv DECLINE IN CHAMBERS 307 

that reverent devotion which the thought of France and her 
position in the world inspires, one is struck, no less than in 
the legislatures of America or Australia, by the pervasively 
materialistic spirit. In a new country like Australia it is 
not surprising to find a certain commonness in political life. 
But France is the country which has at times seemed to live 
by its ideals, and which in bygone days set to Europe the 
standard of chivalric honour. 

This state of things, often complained of by Frenchmen, 
is sometimes treated as a result and sometimes as a cause of 
the comparative paucity among present day politicians of 
such students, writers, and thinkers as adorned the legisla- 
tures of the Restoration, of the Orleans Monarchy, of the 
Second Republic, and, indeed, of the earlier years of the 
Third Republic. True it is that neither Congress nor the 
British House of Commons is richer in such men than is the 
French Chamber. It is chiefly by comparison with its former 
brilliance that the latter seems nowadays to shine with faint 
or few lights of genius. Yet a country so fertile in spiritual 
independence and keen intellectual activity ought to see more 
of its most gifted sons seeking to enter its governing assem- 
bly. Why do comparatively few enter? Partly, men say, 
because the position of a deputy no longer carries social dis- 
tinction outside the district which he represents, while the 
daily work of a deputy is laborious and humiliating. A 
scholar, a university professor, a scientific investigator, even 
an advocate in large practice, would have to renounce his 
pursuits in order to hold his seat by such arts as are forced 
on the deputy. Many who would like to enter are practically 
debarred by the want of local connection, for having their 
home in Paris they may be unable to recommend themselves 
elsewhere. Partly also because men of this type have little 
chance with constituencies. The good graces of local cliques 
are more easily won by the local doctor or lawyer or business 
man who will devote himself to local interests, or, where there 
is room for a stranger, by a wealthy manufacturer or finan- 
cier from some great city. It is also alleged that in parts 
of the country a man of old lineage or polished manners suf- 
fers from his social status. The rural or small town electors 
want some one of their own class, while the wage-earners re- 
gard a wearer of a black coat as a natural enemy. These 



308 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FEANCE pabt n 

tendencies, discouraging to men of refinement or of a philo- 
sophic cast of mind, would operate still more widely but for 
the diversity of social conditions in different parts of the 
country. The monarchical and Catholic West, for instance, 
though not more susceptible to ideas than other regions, offers 
a better chance to members of old landed families, often more 
independent of their constituents than a member can be where 
the masonic lodge or other local clique rules. 






CHAPTER XXVI 

WHAT DEMOCRACY HAS DONE FOB FRANCE 

He who should try to set forth and weigh against one an- 
other the defects and merits of popular government in France 
under the Third Republic would himself err and mislead 
others if he failed to remember the conditions under which 
it has had to live since 1870. These conditions have been 
made by the past, and by it only can they be explained. 
Without repeating the historical sketch presented in Chap- 
ter XVIII., I will try to show, by briefly comparing the re- 
sults of political development in England with those visible 
in France, the advantages which the former has enjoyed for 
working democratic institutions. 

In England the compact framework of society changed 
very slowly from a.d. 1500 to 1900. The ancient aristocracy 
of land and birth passed by degrees into a new aristocracy of 
wealth. The old ties that held each class to those that were 
above it or below it, though slowly changed in character, were 
never roughly broken. 

In France the old feudal order lasted down till 1789, 
though it had become a hollow shell. It continued sharply 
cut off from the bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie were also, if 
less sharply, cut off from the peasantry and the artisans. 
Since the First Revolution there has been going on what the 
French call a morcellement within each class, a dissolution 
of each social stratum into social atoms. 

In England there was, except at a few crises, such as Wat 
Tyler's rising in 1381, very little class hatred and no per- 
manent class antagonism. Neither is there to-day. It has 
appeared in one of the British colonies, though in no acute 
form, and its appearance there surprises the British visitor. 1 

In France the three classes disliked one another before the 

Revolution. The old aristocracy of birth is now reduced to 

i See chapter on Australia, post. 
309 



310 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE PAM n 

comparatively few families, and the new industrial and finan- 
cial plutocracy which has arisen out of the bourgeoisie can- 
not look down on its immediate parents. But that plutocracy 
is hated by the industrial masses, and it fears them. 

In England there were traditions of the independence of 
the legislature and of its power to assert popular rights going 
back to the fourteenth century ; and since the middle of the 
seventeenth the privileges and usages of Parliament had be- 
come familiar to the nation. Every man who entered the 
House of Commons knew, or soon learnt, how to work the 
Parliamentary machine. 

In France the ancient and cumbrous representative insti- 
tution of the States-General had died out, and a new start 
was made at the First Revolution, without experience and in 
the midst of excitement. 

In England the national mind was from early times per- 
vaded by the idea of the supremacy of Law, a law based on 
the old customs of the people, a Law of the Land which oper- 
ated not only as between the king's subjects but against the 
king himself if he sought to transgress it. When the day 
came for restricting the power of the king, that which was 
taken from him went to Parliament, and the last thing which 
Parliament desired was to entrust any discretionary power 
to the State — a word seldom used in England — or to any 
State-appointed local officials. 

In France the Crown was not restrained. The ideas of 
Justice and Law were clearly grasped, and justice was skil- 
fully administered as between subject and subject, but the 
conception of what law should be between subject and sover- 
eign was clouded by a feeling that public interest must pre- 
vail against private interests, perhaps also by the texts' which 
lawyers and judges drew from the law of imperial Rome. 
Thus no well-defined line was drawn limiting the powers of 
the State, and Raison d'etat was allowed to justify the over- 
riding of the subjects' rights. When that argument was 
used, law was affected as is the needle when a magnet is 
brought near to a compass. The men of 1789 found this 
doctrine and practice existing; they used it and let it pass 
on to their successors. The argument of Raison d'etat has 
continued to hold its ground. 

In England there was an old system of local self-govern- 



chap, xxvi FRANCE AND ENGLAND 311 

ment in counties and boroughs. This had, before the end of 
the eighteenth century, become very rusty and practically 
oligarchic. But it had sufficed to exclude the control of the 
central government and had fostered a sentiment of local 
patriotism. 

In France such slight self-government as existed in the 
provinces and the towns before the First Revolution was 
subject to be controlled or overruled by the Crown. The only 
force that tried to resist Louis XVI. 's financial measures was 
the Parlement of Paris. 

In England the central government had few posts to be- 
stow outside the capital ; and when many new offices began to 
be created in the nineteenth century as the functions of 
government went on expanding, a system of competitive ex- 
amination was set up which took them out of the sphere of 
favouritism and made their occupants a practically permanent 
civil service. Members of Parliament, who had been wor- 
ried by the demands of their constituents to be recommended 
for appointments, gladly acquiesced in the loss of what 
brought them more trouble than advantage. Political patron- 
age finally disappeared in the later Victorian days. 

In France the number of places under the central govern- 
ment is extremely large, and the political influence of officials 
at elections and otherwise is so great that it has been deemed 
necessary, by all governments and parties in their turn, to 
confine appointments as far as possible to persons who can 
be trusted to support the existing form of government, what- 
ever it may be. 

In England, down to 1876 and 1886 (when two successive 
schisms broke up the old Whig party), each of the great rival 
parties which had existed since the seventeenth century in- 
cluded large bodies of persons belonging to each of the social 
classes. There were plenty of the poor in the Tory party, 
plenty of wealthy nobles among the Whigs. (The Labour 
party dates only from 1906.) 

In France political parties did not exist before the First 
Revolution; and since then nearly all the large landowners 
and most of the rich have belonged to one of them, and the 
large majority of the working-men to the more advanced sec- 
tions of the other. 

In England abstract ideas have counted for very little in 



312 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE past ii 

politics, because the struggles of the Whigs and the middle 
class against the power of the Crown took the form of an 
assertion of rights some of which were as old as Magna 
Charta, and the habit thus formed of relying on precedents 
and making reforms bit by bit, as each occasion called for 
them, became a tradition and a part of British character. 
Only at rare moments did reformers appeal to Natural Rights. 

In France, on the other hand, theory came before practice, 
dazzling inexperienced minds. When the old monarchy fell, 
the traditions, such as they were, of feudal independence and 
local self-government had been forgotten, so there were no 
foundations, save those of abstract doctrine, on which to 
build. Practice has never been able to keep up with theory, 
and theory has always been apt to stand in the way of slow 
and small reforms. It discredited them as inadequate. 1 

In Great Britain the strife of jarring creeds and churches 
was fought out and all but settled in the sixteenth and seven- 
teenth centuries. Such antagonisms as continued between the 
Established Church and the Nonconformists were of slight 
political moment. The nation has, since 1688, been prac- 
tically of one faith, and persecution went out of fashion in 
England and Scotland because there was no occasion for it. 

In France the reaction against the dominant Church, which 
had continued to persecute till within thirty years of the 
Revolution, was violent enough not only to overthrow the 
Church, but for a time to crush down religious observances. 
Ever since, the hostility of Catholics and Voltaireans, or 
atheists, has divided the nation, causing an exasperation 
more bitter than mere political quarrels provoke. There are 
not enough of Protestants and of Republican Catholics to 
form a middle term between the extremes of Clericalism and 
Secularism. 

These differences may all be traced to the different course 
which events took in each country. They may have been also 
affected by racial qualities inherent in each people. But 
where history supplies a sufficient explanation, why hunt for 
causes in the far more obscure phenomena of racial heredity ? 
More may perhaps be attributed to the insular position of 

i People sometimes allege that there is a fondness for abstract theory 
in the Celtic mind and a preference for practical expedients in the 
Teutonic. But no Celtic gathering ever produced more theories and 
showed more viewiness than did the Frankfurt Parliament of 1848-9. 



chap, xxvi FKANCE AND ENGLAND 313 

Britain, and something also to the fact that the law of im- 
perial Home, never adopted there, did not lend its sanction 
to the doctrines of absolutism. It is not merits in one stock 
of mankind nor defects in the other, but a set of geograph- 
ical facts and a series of historical facts, for which neither 
country is to be praised or blamed, that gave Britain condi- 
tions more favourable to the working of that democratic sys- 
tem into which she passed in 1868 and 1885 than those amid 
which France has had to live. Some of the defects in French 
government are due to those conditions and not to democracy. 
It is still too soon to say whether Britain, which now finds 
herself swept into an epoch of change, will make the most of 
the advantages she has inherited. These differences in the 
preparation of France and of England for a Parliamentary 
democracy need to be remembered when we come to appraise 
the merits of Republican government in France. 

French critics, detached philosophers as well as reaction- 
ary politicians, complain of what they call " Parliamen- 
tarism." That system is on the face of it a government by 
ministers responsible to the Chambers (virtually to the Cham- 
ber of Deputies) who are assumed to represent the views of 
their constituents, and thus to give effect to the wishes of the 
majority of the nation. Thus described, it resembles the 
system of Britain and her self-governing Dominions. In 
practice, however, it is largely worked by the personal rela- 
tions of deputies to the majority in their constituencies, or to 
those who appear to lead that majority, and of ministers to 
deputies. Deputies hold their seats by obtaining favours for 
constituencies or individual constituents, ministers hold their 
places by granting these favours to deputies, a process which 
depletes the Treasury, demoralizes the legislature, and weak- 
ens the Administration. It is government by patronage. It 
is aggravated by the division of the Chamber into so many 
parties and groups that for many years past no ministry has 
been able to command a majority all its own, and every 
arrangement has a provisional character. Sometimes (as in 
1901) a. combination is formed, but its permanence cannot 
be reckoned on. This, in making Cabinets unstable, compels 
a minister to think constantly of every vote, frequently even 
of one to be caught from among his opponents. The group 
system engenders and almost justifies intrigue, for how else 



314 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE pabt n 

can a working majority be secured ? French politicians are 
probably not less scrupulous than politicians in other coun- 
tries, but they are driven to tortuous methods. 

The jealousy which the deputies show of the Administra- 
tion may be explained partly as a tradition from the days 
of the Second Empire, partly from the critical temper in- 
herent in the French nature, partly from the corporate ambi- 
tion which leads every body of men to try to extend their 
power. It is unfortunate as a further source of instability, 
though sometimes as, for instance, in war crises, stringent 
criticism is needed to keep ministers up to the mark. 

The plan of conducting legislation by Committees of the 
Chamber has been censured as weakening the power of a 
ministry to frame and push through its measures, and as in- 
juring their symmetry. But this is due to the increasing 
demands made on the time of legislatures. The same pro- 
cedure has been forced on the American Congress. In the 
British Parliament the opposite method of legislation by the 
whole House led to a deplorable congestion of business, to 
cure which a system of committees is being now tried. The 
governing assemblies of all the large countries are oppressed 
by more work than they can dispose of. 

Of corruption in the legislature I have spoken already. 
Though neither flagrant nor widespread, there is enough to 
show that republics do not necessarily, according to Mon- 
tesquieu's dictum, live by Virtue as Monarchies live by Hon- 
our. A graver defect has been the mismanagement of 
finance, the extravagance of every government, and the in- 
crease of the floating debt. So far from securing economy, 
as John Bright and the English Badicals of his time fondly 
expected, democracy has proved a more costly though less in- 
competent form of government than was the autocracy of 
Louis XV. in France or that of the Czars in Kussia. 

The Executive, pitifully weak in its relations with the 
deputies, is over-strong as against the individual citizen. Of 
civil liberty, as understood in Britain and America, there is 
not too much but too little. 1 The citizen is not safe from 

i In recent years something has been done to provide better guaran- 
tees. But something still remains to be done. A high authority wrote 
in 1910: "Notre histoire politique des cent vingt dernieres annees se 
resume dans ce paradox irreductible enervant et sterile, loger un individu 
parfaitement libre heureux et satisfait dans un fitat puissant omni- 



chap, xxvi DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT 315 

domiciliary visits and arbitrary arrests. On the other hand, 
the press enjoys practical impunity for whatever charges it 
may bring against individuals. 

The responsibility of officials to special administrative 
tribunals, instead of to the ordinary courts of justice, secures 
for them, not indeed indulgence, for the special courts do their 
duty fairly enough, but a privileged position which reduces 
the citizen's sense of freedom. This is the more serious 
because the range of action of the centralized administration 
is so wide, stretching over the whole country, drawing trivial 
matters to Paris for decision. The Prefect, a product of the 
old regime reproduced under Napoleon, has not had his wings 
clipped by democracy. The local civil servant, ruled by the 
deputy through the Prefect, is expected to render help in elec- 
tions, and- is at all times liable to be accused of political parti- 
sanship. The Executive, moreover, sometimes at the prompt- 
ing or with the consent of the Legislature, has been inclined 
to infringe upon the judicial department. Judges were once 
displaced on a large scale because of an alleged want of 
loyalty to the Republic. 

These faults have been excused on grounds of political 
necessity. Where the very form of government is in dispute, 
and attempts to overthrow it by force may be feared, the 
same measure of freedom cannot — so it is argued — be 
allowed to local authorities or to individual citizens as in 
countries where a well-settled order has long existed, for a 
centralized bureaucracy holds a nation compactly together 
and restrains tendencies to disunion. To this it is answered 
that the policy of restraint is one to which republics ought 
least of all to resort, because, themselves founded on freedom, 
they claim that freedom assures the contentment of the people 
and their loyalty to free institutions. But though every 
Government, in its turn, applies repressive measures, defend- 
ing itself by the plea that its predecessors have used them, the 
average citizen does not resent such action. If conservatively 
disposed, as are most bourgeois and peasants, he sees in them 
a guarantee of order. 

The intolerance shown in religious matters and the spying 
upon officials, upon the army, even apparently upon judges, 

potent et autoritaire." — M. Maurice Caudel, in the preface to his in- 
structive book Nos Liberies politiques. 



316 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE pabt ii 

in which this intolerance expresses itself, and which in 1913 
was charged on Freemasons who were believed to have prac- 
tised it, are equally unworthy of a free Government. They 
are palliated on the same ground, viz. that the Koman Church, 
its clergy, and its aims are unfriendly to the Republic, so that 
a sous prefet who goes frequently to mass or lets his daughter 
sing in a church choir is presumably wanting in loyalty to the 
government he serves. 

" Liberty, Equality, Fraternity " is still the motto of the 
Republic. Equality, civil and political, exists. Social 
equality is a thing which governments cannot establish, ex- 
cept by extinguishing all classes save one. Economic equal- 
ity has come no nearer than elsewhere. Only a social and 
economic revolution could create it, and it is doubtful whether 
it could thereafter be maintained. Liberty is less secured 
than in some monarchies. As for Fraternity, one who notes 
the personal bitterness to which political and ecclesiastical 
partisanship gives rise is reminded of Metternich's saying: 
" If I lived in France I should prefer to have cousins rather 
than brothers." 

Class hatreds, anti-religious intolerance, and the deficient 
respect for personal liberty have not been brought into France 
by democracy. They are maladies of long standing, for 
which it is responsible only so far as it has not succeeded in 
eliminating them. It is the misfortune not the fault of the 
Republic that antagonisms are stronger than affinities, that 
they impede the working of government, distract it from 
some of its social tasks, and create a general sense of unrest. 

This may also be said of the alleged indifference to politics 
of a large section of the population. Four revolutions and 
the almost incessant turmoil of political life since 1788 have 
not sufficed to make the bulk of the peasantry, and a consider- 
able percentage of the bourgeoisie, take that steadily sus- 
tained interest in public affairs expected from them when the 
Republic was established. This impairs the influence of pub- 
lic opinion. In some classes it is sluggish, while if one re- 
gards the whole country, the divisions are too sharply cut 
to be blent into anything approaching a general national will. 
Though these conditions are no worse than they were under 
previous forms of government — perhaps indeed less evident 



chap, xxvi DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT 317 

than in the days of the Orleanist and Bonapartist monarch- 
ies — they are naturally disappointing to those apostles of 
popular government who hold that the gift of political power 
confers the sense of a duty to use it and the capacity to use 
it wisely. Happy faith, which the experience of a century 
and a quarter has not shaken. 

It is time to turn to the other side of the balance-sheet and 
see what the democratic Republic has accomplished for 
France since 1871. 

Its achievements must be judged, not only by the adverse 
conditions (already described), which the Past had be- 
queathed, but also by comparison with the performances of 
previous French monarchies, and in particular with those of 
the Second Empire, a period of material growth and wide- 
spread prosperity. Has France risen or sunk since her gov- 
ernment became popular ? By how much has the individual 
citizen been made happier and more contented ? 

Civil administration has been, both in town and country, 
reasonably efficient and generally honest. There has been 
less corruption and favouritism among officials than under 
the Second Empire. Some municipalities have been waste- 
ful as well as lavish in expenditure, and that of Paris far 
from pure; yet such scandals as have arisen are less than 
those which, common in America from 1865 to 1900, have 
not yet been expunged from its cities. 

Public order has been creditably maintained. When one 
considers the flame of anger that has blazed up in more than 
one political crisis, and in great strikes, among an excitable 
people, one must admit that only an Executive armed with 
large powers and bold enough to use them, even in the face 
of denunciations in the Chamber, could have checked dis- 
orders threatening civil war. The range of action and the 
arbitrary methods allowed to the police shock the Englishman 
or American, but they are seldom used with an evil purpose. 
Civil justice is less costly than in Britain or America. Few 
complaints are made of its administration or of that of the 
criminal courts, and the superior judges are generally trusted. 
The procedure in criminal cases which foreign observers have 
censured as harsh towards the suspected prisoner, and the 
laxity of the rules regarding the admission of evidence, are 



318 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE part ii 

things of old standing in France, and unconnected with the 
form of government. Respect for the law and the Executive 
have prevented the growth of the habit of lynching. 

It is hard to estimate the value of the legislation which the 
Republic has produced without passing an opinion on meas- 
ures which nothing but experience of their working can test. 
The subjects which have chiefly occupied the Chambers have 
been education, controversial only so far as it affects the action 
of ecclesiastics, the relations of Church and State, the right 
of working-men to combine in unions, old-age pensions, sani- 
tation, factory laws, and taxation, the most hotly contested 
point in which has been not the tariff, for Protectionist doc- 
trine reigns, but the imposition of an income-tax. Upon 
these subjects statutes of wide scope have been passed. There 
are complaints that more has not been effected for the benefit 
of the masses, but whoever considers the atmosphere of in- 
cessant party strife in which the Chambers have bad to debate 
and decide will not disparage the amount and value of the 
work done to improve industrial conditions. The total an- 
nual output of measures is said to be about the same as under 
the two preceding monarchies. Most of these have been non- 
controversial and of minor importance, partly no doubt be- 
cause the Code framed under Napoleon definitely settled 
many questions in the law of family and the law of property 
which have remained less clearly determined in English- 
speaking countries, where there has been little codification on 
a large scale. 

One of the chief tasks of each successive ministry has been 
to provide for military defence. Though the results accom- 
plished fell short of what was frequently demanded, and 
though pessimists declared that democratic habits could not 
but destroy obedience, these results have been creditable to a 
people which had renounced and did not wish to revive its 
old militaristic spirit. A superb line of fortifications along 
the north-eastern frontier was constructed in the 'seventies 
and 'eighties. Constant attention was given to the supply of 
artillery. Mobilization was efficiently carried through in 
August 1914, and the French Army acquitted itself in the 
war which then began with a discipline and spirit worthy 
of its best traditions. The management of naval affairs, in 
which France had shone in days now remote, was less satis- 



chap, xxvi DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT 319 

factory, while the performances of the fleet in war seemed 
scarcely proportionate to the sums that had been spent upon 
producing it, or to the ancient fame of the French naval 
service. 

The colonial possessions of France have been largely in- 
creased under the Republic in North, in West, and in Central 
Africa. Madagascar has been annexed, and so have large 
territories in South-E astern Asia. All these acquisitions 
(except Tunis and Morocco) are tropical, and would be un- 
suited for the settlement of Frenchmen, even if France had 
any surplus of population to send abroad. Whether they 
have the commercial value attributed to them, considering 
the expenditure which the maintenance of a navy to protect 
them implies, is a further question. 

Foreign policy has been conducted, through many difficult 
crises, sometimes unwisely, yet with fewer variations of aim 
than have been visible in the lines followed by the other great 
European States. The two Chambers, in this respect re- 
flecting and obeying the mind and purpose of the nation, have 
almost always strengthened and supported the Executive. 
When one considers the defects incident to the rule of popular 
assemblies, the restraint which the Chambers imposed upon 
themselves must elicit the respect of impartial observers. 
Foreign policy has been deemed, ever since (and even be- 
fore) the days of Demosthenes, to be the weak point of a 
democracy. This charge finds little support in a study of 
French history between 1871 and 1914. Greater errors were 
committed and more weakness shown under the Orleans Mon- 
archy and certainly under the Second Empire. 

The chief praise, however, which may be given to the 
Third Republic is that it has lasted fifty years, more than 
twice as long as any preceding form of government since 
1792. * Several times it has been in peril. But though the 
currents drove the ship very near to the rocks, she managed, 
by skill or good luck, to escape them unscathed, and her 
course during the present century has been steadier than be- 
fore. It would be too much to say that the mass of the 

iThe monarchy of Napoleon lasted fourteen years (dating from the 
beginning of the Consulate), that of the Bourbon Restoration sixteen 
years, that of Louis Philippe eighteen years, that of Louis Napoleon 
Bonaparte nineteen years. The first Republic had a life of seven, the 
second of three years. 



320 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE part n 

people are better contented than in previous generations, for 
the peasantry and a large part of the bourgeoisie were con- 
tent under Louis Napoleon, to whom many looked back as the 
man " qui faisait vivre toute le monde," and large sections 
of the working-men are impatient for a socialistic Republic. 
But a long series of elections has shown that though there 
is a dislike of Parliamentarism and a. hankering after a 
stronger Executive — I do not mean a dictatorship — the 
old monarchical parties are virtually extinct. The Repub- 
lic, in one form or another, is the choice of France. Even 
Paris, which has so often made revolutions without the will, 
or against the will, of the country, could not do so to-day. 
Tocqueville asked, more than half a century ago, " Are we 
on the way to intermittent anarchy, the incurable disease of 
old peoples ? " But France seems no nearer to-day than in 
1870 to that calamity. Many forces are struggling for mas- 
tery within her. But those that make for stability, a sta- 
bility in those essentials which give life and hope, seem likely 
to prevail. 

What are the lessons which the history of popular govern- 
ment in France can furnish to other countries? Caution is 
needed in basing conclusions of general applicability on the 
experience of a country whose conditions are so peculiar, 
for the successes and the failures there may be due less to the 
system than to those conditions. But subject to this reserva- 
tion some few morals may be drawn illuminative for the 
student of popular governments in general. 

Democracy needs local self-government as its foundation. 
That is the school in which the citizen acquires the habit of 
independent action, learns what is his duty to the State, and 
learns also how to discharge it. The control of local affairs 
by the Central Government has in France lessened the citi- 
zen's sense of responsibility. It has multiplied the posts of 
which the executive can dispose, and thereby enlarged the 
field in which political patronage can run riot. Patronage 
may no doubt be employed and abused by local authorities 
also, and is so employed in America and elsewhere for per- 
sonal or party ends. But this does less harm to the higher 
interests of the State, for the field of action is narrower, 
and the malady may be only sporadic, curable by the action 
of the local citizens themselves when they have been roused 



chap, xxvi DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT 321 

to a sense of its evils, as it is being cured to-day in the United 
States. 

That democracy is not necessarily a weak government is 
proved by the vigour and firmness with which the French 
Executive has more than once repressed breaches of public 
order. Much of course depends on the support which the 
ministry may count upon from public opinion. Much de- 
pends on the individual minister. He may be timid, he 
may be strong. But the general truth remains that a force- 
ful man whose motives are above suspicion will be supported. 
The masses value courage in their leaders. 

The control of a single omnipotent Assembly is dangerous. 
A check on haste or passion is needed, be it that of a Rigid 
Constitution limiting the Assembly's powers, or that of a 
presidential veto, or that of a Second Chamber. Some high 
authorities would like to see the French Senate stronger, not 
merely in respect of its legal powers, but by the weight of 
the men who compose it. But taking it as it is, it has been 
a valuable safeguard. 

Democracies, especially Parliamentary democracies, need 
the kind of leadership which creates compact and steady 
parties, one of which may constitute a majority capable of 
maintaining, for some while at least, a government that will 
pursue a settled and consistent policy. It fixes upon one 
or a few that responsibility which can no more be fixed on 
an Assembly than you can grasp a handful of smoke. France 
has suffered, since the death of Gambetta, from the want of 
such leadership. Jules Ferry had some of the qualities re- 
quired. Waldeck-Rousseau had these in larger measure, and 
he pulled things together when they were falling into con- 
fusion. The leader may no doubt be a demagogue who can 
lead the Assembly or beguile the people into dangerous paths, 
but France is not a soil specially favourable to demagogism, 
less favourable perhaps than England. France is intensely 
critical. It is not from plausible Parliamentary or platform 
rhetoricians that the menacing spectre of a dictatorship has 
arisen. 

Universal suffrage offers no guarantee against such a 

spectre. It installed Louis Napoleon as President for ten 

years, it subsequently made him emperor, it confirmed his 

power a few months before his fall in 1870, and on each 
vou i y 



ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : TRANCE 



PAET II 



occasion by a vast majority. It gave a good deal of support 
to Boulanger. Caesarism can attract the masses now as it 
did in the last days of the Roman Republic. 

Secret societies, indispensable to the friends of liberty who 
conspired against the tyrants of Italy two generations ago, 
are regrettable in a country which has secured full constitu- 
tional freedom. Their influence on politics is unhealthy be- 
cause irresponsible, prone to intolerance, and easily made 
the tool of selfishness or social persecution. 

Individual liberty is not necessarily secured either by the 
sovereignty of the people, or by equality in private civil 
rights, or by social equality. In France the citizen has less 
security against arbitrary arrest and detention, or the search- 
ing of his house, or any act of discretionary authority on the 
part of police or other officials, than Americans think to be 
an essential part of freedom or than Englishmen enjoyed as 
such long before democracy was established in England. He 
is subject in peace time to some of those stringent restrictions 
which in most free countries are imposed only in days of 
war. 

Whoever surveys the history of France from 1789 to our 
own time must be struck by the habits of thought and action 
which repeated revolutions engender. Each violent disturb- 
ance of the established order disposes men to another. That 
" sacred right of insurrection " which ought to be the last 
resort when other remedies have failed, is invoked on occa- 
sions which do not warrant it, and is likely, if successful, 
to carry destruction farther than is necessary. Weakening 
the respect for authority, it encourages ambitious adventur- 
ers to use it against a lawful government whose defects can 
be removed in a legal and peaceful way. The fear of it, 
terrifying the quiet and " respectable " citizens who think 
first of their comfort and their property, makes them rally to 
the usurping adventurer and support the government he sets 
up. The acts of violence that accompany it may leave be- 
hind animosities dividing the nation for generations to come. 1 

i Of Labour troubles and the advocacy of what is called " Direct 
Action " nothing need be said here because these phenomena have ap- 
peared in other democratic countries also. So far from being charac- 
teristic of democracy, the General Strike (as a means for compelling 
submission by a government) and Direct Action are attacks on the 
fundamental principles of democratic government. What they show is 



chap, xxvi DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT 323 

All these things happened in France. That the Revolu- 
tion was needed in 1789 few will now deny, but two or three 
generations passed before the spirit which the Revolution 
called up could be exorcised. Half a century of constitu- 
tional government seems to have now broken the habit of in- 
surrection, for the people know that they can obtain by their 
votes whatever they desire. But they still suffer, if not from 
the disease, yet from what physicians call the sequelae. The 
venerable doctrine of the English Whigs that where consti- 
tutional changes are needed they ought to be effected with 
the least possible breach of continuity, may seem obsolete and 
moss-grown. Nevertheless there are countries in which it 
still finds its application. 

Those who say that democracy has not brought to the 
service of the State enough of the best ability of the nation 
cannot mean that there is a lack of talent, for as George Sand 
was wont to say, " Talent is everywhere in France." Eng- 
lishmen and Americans who live in Paris are struck by the 
sustained vivacity of French politics and the amazing clever- 
ness they elicit. The Chambers are a theatre in which the 
actors are also the audience, enjoying as connoisseurs one 
another's performances. Some of this cleverness might, how- 
ever, be usefully exchanged for an infusion of calm and re- 
flective minds, with a wider outlook around and ahead, who 
could by their characters and attainments exert a steadying 
influence on opinion. Each democracy needs leaders of the 
qualities fitted to compensate its peculiar defects. There is 
no lack in France of men rich in knowledge, acute and vigor- 
ous in thought. No modern country has done more, if in- 
deed any has done so much, to originate and develop philo- 
sophic thinking on politics. But the greater part of these 
stores of knowledge and wisdom are not used in political life, 
and those few statesmen who possess them seem unable to 
breathe freely in the circumambient atmosphere of passion 
and partisanship. 

A sketch of what the Republic has done or failed to do 

for France cannot well conclude without some reference to 

its alleged effects upon the intellectual and moral life of 

the country. Edmond Scherer, writing in 1883, remarked, 
n$«*jf* -, : ,.,,v i* r- ,.. 

that those fundamental principles are either not understood or not 
regarded by a section of those who consider themselves democrats. 



324 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES: FRANCE pakt n 

as many had said before him and have said since, that de- 
mocracy was producing mediocrity. Some able French 
writers of our own day, not Koyalists or Clericalists, attribute 
to it that moral decline also which they discover in their 
countrymen. With all deference to these eminent persons, 
one may doubt whether forms of government have more than 
a slight and transient influence upon literature or art or 
philosophy. Proposing in a later chapter to deal with this 
subject, I will here touch but briefly on the case of France. 
Political freedom has not there borne those intellectual fruits 
which enthusiasts who lived under despotism expected, for 
great thinkers and teachers and statesmen are no more fre- 
quent now than they were in those days. Democracy may, 
in the sphere of politics, have levelled down as well as lev- 
elled up, and failed to produce many figures conspicuous for 
elevation and independence. But though it may develop 
some kinds of talent more than others, there is nothing to 
show that it reduces the volume of talent that any country 
possesses, still less that it retards the growth of science, or 
of art, or of learning, or of polite letters. These things lie 
outside politics. They bloom or wither from causes hitherto 
unexplained, perhaps unexplainable : they are affected by 
social environment and the general tendencies of the age. If 
it be a materialistic age, men whose minds feed chiefly upon 
newspapers, men occupied with business projects and leading 
a restless, leisureless life, are not likely to be creative in the 
higher realms of thought. Whatever tendencies happen to 
rule their world will find expression in politics also, and 
colour their ideals; but it is in the tendencies themselves 
rather than in the form of government that the cause re- 
sides. Why suggest that it is democracy which has refused 
to the France of the twentieth century poets of outstanding 
fame like Victor Hugo, or prose writers like Renan and 
Taine, when we note the same absence of exceptionally bril- 
liant figures in almost every country, whatever its form of 
government. Ranke and Mommsen have had no successors 
of equal rank in monarchical Germany; nor have Words- 
worth, Tennyson, and Browning had such successors in demo- 
cratic England. The charge that may be with more force 
brought against democracy is that it has failed, as in many 
Other countries, to bring to the front, in sufficient numbers, 



chap, xxvi INFLUENCE OF DEMOCRACY 325 

men of high constructive gifts, fit to grapple with the in- 
creasingly difficult problems the modern world has to face. 
Herein universal suffrage and the representative system have 
not fulfilled the hopes of 1789. 

With morals the case is not quite the same, since they 
are affected by the standards which the law sets up and 
which the habits of political life make familiar. If law 
gives a free rein to licence in writing or in conduct, it may 
help to lower the tone of social life. The law, or the appli- 
cation of it, has in these matters been far from strict under 
the Republic. But the standard of morality, public or pri- 
vate, is in practice no lower than it has often been under 
monarchies or oligarchies. Not to go back to the Regency 
and Louis XV., those who read the records of the Restora- 
tion after 1815 or remember the Second Empire, will not 
single out the Third Republic for censure. Pecuniary cor- 
ruption was far more general and more flagrant under the 
Russian autocracy than it has ever been in any free country. 
Sixty years ago the France of Louis Napoleon used to be 
unfavourably contrasted with what were then believed to be 
the superior morals of Germany. Such a contrast between 
the two countries would not be drawn to-day. The increase 
of divorce, arraigned as a blemish due to the legislation of 
the Republic, is a feature of modern society in every country, 
nor is morality any higher in the countries that forbid di- 
vorce altogether than in those which permit it. There may, 
however, be force in the complaint that recent French legis- 
lation discourages school instruction in moral duty by for- 
bidding the teacher to make any reference to the existence of 
the Deity, and by excluding everything of a religious nature 
from the school-books. 

Political philosophers have been apt to attribute too much 
to the influence of forms of government upon the life of a 
nation as a whole. Foreign observers in particular are apt 
to fall into this error, knowing less of the inner spirit and 
domestic virtues of a people than they do of its government 
and politics, for where a government is popular its defects 
are patent to all eyes, and these defects are taken to be an 
index to its character. Seven years ago such observers 
thought they saw in France a people torn by internal dis- 
sensions, religious and political, a legislature changeful and 



326 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : FRANCE part ii 

discredited, a large part of the population indifferent to 
politics, only a small fraction of the finest intellect of the 
country taking part in its public life. They concluded that 
France was a decadent country, in which the flame of na- 
tional life was already flickering low. Then suddenly a war 
more terrible than any known before broke upon the nation, 
and an invading army occupied large parts of its territory. 
Political dissensions continued, political intrigues were as 
rife as ever; ministry followed ministry in quick succession. 
But the Nation rose to confront the peril that threatened its 
existence, and showed that the old spirit of France had lost 
nothing of its fervour, and her soldiers nothing of their 
valour. 






SWITZERLAND 
CHAPTEE XXVII 

THE PEOPLE AND THEIR HISTORY 

Among the modern democracies which are true democ- 
racies, Switzerland has the highest claim to be studied. 1 It 
is the oldest, for it contains communities in which popular 
government dates farther back than it does anywhere else 
in the world ; and it has pushed democratic doctrines farther, 
and worked them out more consistently, than any other Eu- 
ropean State. Moreover, being a Federal State, it contains 
within its comparatively narrow limits a greater variety of 
institutions based on democratic principles than any other 
country, greater even than the Federations of America and 
Australia can show. 

To understand Swiss institutions and their working one 
must know something both of the physical character of the 
country and of the history of the small communities, diverse 
in race and speech, which have grown into the Swiss nation. 
The natural conditions might seem most unfavourable to the 
creation of a State or even of a nation. The Swiss people, 
as they are to-day, dwell on both sides of a gigantic mountain 
mass, those to the north on a high plateau traversed by a 
series of ridges, the rest in deep valleys separated from one 
another by craggy heights and widespreading snow-fields. 
No natural boundary marks them off from the Germans to 
the north and east, from the French to the west, and from 
the Italians to the south. Ethnologically they belong some 
to one, some to another, of those three racial stocks, and have 

i There are in English several histories of Switzerland, and several 
useful descriptions of the constitutional system, but there does not seem 
to be any systematic account of the practical working of that system, 
presenting a picture of the current political life of the nation. The 
sketch which follows is based on personal enquiries made in Switzerland 
by myself in 1905 and 1919. 

327 



328 SWITZERLAND PAK t ii 

no common language. It is a remarkable series of events, 
reaching back over more than six hundred years, that has 
brought men of these three stocks together, and made them 
not only a united people, but one of the most united, and 
certainly the most patriotic, among the peoples of Europe 



Outline of Swiss History 






Towards the end of the thirteenth century three small 
Teutonic communities dwelling in secluded valleys to the 
south and south-east of the Lake of Luzern, entered into a 
league of mutual defence to protect themselves against the 
encroachments of the land-owning nobles of the lower coun- 
try to the north, to whose exactions, based on more or less 
doubtful feudal rights, they would not submit. Turning to 
account the strength of their mountain fastnesses, they re- 
pelled the repeated attacks of the Counts of Habsburg, 
though never disputing the ultimate sovereignty of the Em- 
peror, having indeed received favours from the great mon- 
archs of the house of Hohenstaufen. Like the Englishmen 
who in the same age were wresting from the Crown a rec- 
ognition of English liberties, they proclaimed no abstract 
principles of freedom, but stood on the foundation of their 
ancient rights. They lived off the produce of their own 
fields and woods and pastures, governing themselves by gath- 
erings of the people in which every householder was the equal 
of every other. This was the beginning of democracy. 
After a time other rural communities and a few cities, some 
which, like Zurich and Luzern, may have come down as 
trading centres from Roman times, some which, like Bern, 
had grown up as hill fortresses in the welter of the Dark 
Ages, entered into alliance with these stalwart mountaineers, 
and by degrees fresh communities were added, all being 
allied to the original three, but not necessarily to each of 
the others. In 1353, when Bern joined, the League came to 
number eight cantons. In 1513 the accession of Appenzell 
raised it to thirteen, at which figure it remained down till 
the changes induced by the French Revolution. Before the 
end of the fifteenth century it had become a power in Central 
Europe. The religious dissensions of the Reformation put a 
severe strain upon its cohesion, for half the cantons embraced 



chap, xxvu PEOPLE AND THEIR HISTORY 329 

Protestantism and half clung to Home, but it survived the 
strain, for the supreme interest of common defence held its 
members together. In 1648 the Confederation was recog- 
nized by the Treaties of Westphalia as an independent State, 
the theoretical suzerainty of the Empire having by that time 
become obsolete. The internal political institutions of the 
allied communities varied greatly. The rural cantons were 
pure democracies, governing themselves by meetings of the 
people. Of the cities, some, like Bern, were close oligarchies 
of nobles : in others oligarchy was more or less tempered by 
a popular element. As the Confederation bound them to- 
gether only for offensive and defensive purposes, each canton 
had control of its domestic affairs. The Diet met to deal 
with external policy and divers matters in which the cantons 
were jointly interested, and the delegates who sat in it acted 
on the instructions given by their respective cantons. There 
was, as in the United States between 1776 and 1789, no 
Central Executive. Some cantons had by conquests in war 
acquired territories whose inhabitants they ruled as subjects, 
and to whom they granted none of the freedom they claimed 
for themselves. 

The French Revolution ushered in a period of storm and 
confusion. In 1798 French armies entered Switzerland. 
Much fighting followed. The old system was completely 
overthrown. 1 A centralized Helvetic Republic was created, 
and vanished when a Federal system, far closer than that of 
the old League, was established by Napoleon in 1803. 
Change followed change. A new and larger Confederation 
was set up in 1815 ; and even thereafter unrest and dissen- 
sions continued till, after the short Sonderbund 2 war of 
1847 between the Protestant and Catholic cantons had ended 
by the victory of the former, a new Constitution was created 
in 1848, which turned what had been a League of States 
into a Federal State, modelled in many respects upon the 
lines of the United States Constitution. This frame of na- 
tional government was, after long debates, further amended 
in 1874, and it is by the Constitution of that year (altered 

1 A succinct and lucid account of these events is given in Mr. Cool- 
idge's valuable article " Switzerland " in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 
11th edition, vol. xxvi. 

2 The Sonderbund was the separate league set up by seven seceding 
Roman Catholic cantons. 



330 SWITZERLAND pakt u 

subsequently in certain points) that Switzerland is now gov- 
erned. The territories formerly subject to particular can- 
tons, as Vaud was subject to Bern and as the Italian districts 
now forming Ticino were to the three oldest Forest Cantons 
(Uri, Schwytz, and TTnterwalden), were in 1803 raised into 
autonomous cantons, and all Swiss citizens now enjoy equal 
political rights under cantonal constitutions, and under the 
Constitution of the Confederation. 

Differences, however, remain between the component parts, 
differences so marked as to make the unity of the Swiss na- 
tion a singular, perhaps a unique, phenomenon in history. 
Nearly two-thirds of the population speak German, most of 
the others French, a few Italian, a still smaller number 
Romansch or Lad in. 1 A considerable majority both of Ger- 
man-speaking and of French-speaking people are Protestants, 
the rest Roman Catholics. Fortunately the local boundaries 
of the religious confessions do not coincide with those of 
language, for in some Protestant cantons the people speak 
German; in some Catholic cantons they speak French; in 
some Catholics and Protestants are mixed, and both lan- 
guages are spoken. Racial intermixture proceeds steadily 
though slowly, and the diverse elements are assimilated more 
through literature and migration and commercial intercourse 
than by intermarriage. Villages may be found in which the 
German-speaking inhabitants do not know French, nor the 
French-speakers German. Some are more advanced than 
others in political knowledge and experience, but all alike 
are devoted to Switzerland, proud of its history, resolved to 
maintain the liberties both of the Cantons and of the Con- 
federation. The circumstances which detached them from 
the three great neighbouring peoples secured to the older 
cantons a freedom which they prized all the more because 
they alone among continental nations enjoyed it; and when 
the subject lands were emancipated this love of freedom and 
fidelity to national traditions spread from the older cantons 
to the newer. Thus have members of three races become 
one people. 

But though united they are not homogeneous. Not only 
in language are there differences, but also in the occupations 

i A form of Romance speech differing a little from the Romansch 
which is spoken, along with German, in the Grisons ( Graubunden ) . 



chap, xxvii THE SWISS PEOPLE 331 

of the inhabitants, in the external conditions of their life, 
in religion, in character, in ideas and habits of thought ; and 
with this diversity there is also a local pride which clings to 
time-honoured ways and resists the tendencies, strong as 
these have become, that make for uniformity. Here, there- 
fore, are the salient features of the nation which the student 
of their institutions must keep always before his mind — a 
strenuous patriotism bracing up the sense of national unity, 
an abounding variety in the details of social, of economic and 
of political life, coupled with an attachment to local self- 
government, which, having been the life-breath of the original 
cantons, passed into the minds and hearts of the others also, 
making them wish to share in the ancient traditions, and con- 
tributing to the overthrow of oligarchy in the cities even 
where, as in Bern, it had been strongest. Thus one may say 
that the three Forest Cantons, the highland kernel of what 
was called in the sixteenth century the " Old League of Up- 
per Germany " have, while each retaining to-day no more 
territory than they held in 1291, so spread out by their tra- 
ditions and by the spirit they kindled as to be the creators 
of the new democratic State. Success in war, and the pride 
in common triumphs, counted for much in the earlier stages 
of the process, while in the latest the existence of four great 
States to the north, east, south, and west, had, so to speak, 
squeezed the Swiss together, keeping them always on their 
guard against dangers from abroad. 

The diversity of those who inhabit this small area (15,976 
square miles) has increased of recent years by the growth of 
manufactures. One-third of the total population (which was 
estimated in 1915 at 3,900,000) is still engaged in pastoral 
and agricultural occupations, and the number of persons own- 
ing land is given as about 500,000. Among manufacturing 
industries, textiles (silk and cotton) are most important, 
watch-making and the production of machinery coming next. 
There are practically no mines, except of salt. Although the 
country has to import its coal, and is only beginning to de- 
velop the water power furnished by many mountain torrents, 
the recent extension of factories and workshops has created 
a large working-class population in the towns, especially of 
the north-eastern cantons, and drawn in a crowd of immi- 
grants, chiefly from Germany, many of whom have not be- 



332 SWITZEKLAND paet n 

come citizens. 1 This has helped to diffuse socialistic prin- 
ciples, as the immigration of Italians into the industrial dis- 
tricts and of French into the West has largely increased the 
number of Roman Catholics. 2 In Geneva, the city of Calvin, 
these now form a majority of the inhabitants, though not of 
the citizens. The growth of the urban element as compared 
with that of the country dwellers naturally affects political 
parties, and the incoming foreigners do not at once imbibe 
Swiss patriotism and Swiss ways of thinking. But the rural 
folk, with their traditions of a historic patriotism, their in- 
dividualism, and their habits of local self-government, still 
remain the dominant element and give to the nation its pecul- 
iar character of steadiness and solidity. 

i In the district round Zurich there were said to be, in 1914, 50,000 
Italians, the great majority of whom were not being assimilated by 
the Swiss. Of the total population of the Confederation 15 per cent 
were in that year foreigners. 

2 The Protestants were, in 1910, 2,108,000; the Roman Catholics 
1,594,000. 



CHAPTEK XXVIII 

political institutions 

Local Government — The Commune 

As Swiss political institutions have been built up on the 
foundation of small communities, rural and urban, accus- 
tomed to control their own affairs, it is from this kernel that 
a description may fitly start. I begin with the Communes, 
passing on next to the Cantons and thence to the Confedera- 
tion. The Commune is in some places as old as the Canton, 
in some even older. The history of its earlier forms, its 
control of the common lands, the various features it showed 
in different districts of the country, and the transformations 
it has undergone down to quite recent times, — these are 
matters so intricate that I must be content with observing 
that the commune was from the earliest times a potent factor 
in accustoming the whole people to take interest in and know 
how to handle local affairs, every man on a level with his 
fellows. It is still the political unit of the nation and the 
focus of its local public life. To be naturalized as a Swiss 
citizen, one must be a member of some commune, and this 
gives (with the approval of the cantonal authority) both can- 
tonal and national citizenship. There are now over 3164 
communes in the country, varying greatly in size and popula- 
tion, and roughly corresponding with American townships. 
They deal with many branches of local business (though not 
everywhere to the same extent) such as education, police, 
poor relief, water-supply, sometimes in conjunction with a 
cantonal authority. Usually, too, a commune holds prop- 
erty, and has, in rural areas, the supervision of the com- 
munal woods and pastures. In the German-speaking can- 
tons it is governed, in rural places and very small towns, by 
a mass meeting of the citizens in which questions are de- 
bated as well as voted upon. Where the population is larger, 

333 



334 SWITZEKLAND PA bt n 

and generally in the French-speaking districts, the main busi- 
ness is the election of the Communal Council, a standing 
body for conducting current business and making minor ap- 
pointments. Its chairman (like the Maire in France) has 
often special functions and a certain measure of independent 
action. 1 

In parts of Switzerland some communes were, till the end 
of the eighteenth century, virtually sovereign States, tiny, 
but independent. Such was the hamlet of Gersau, east of 
Brunnen, on the shore of the Lake of Luzern, and now in- 
cluded in the canton of Schwytz, and such were the com- 
munes of the upper valleys of the Ehine and the Inn, which 
formed themselves into the three Leagues that, still later, 
united to form the canton of Grisons (Graubiinden). 

In the larger towns the commune becomes a municipality, 
governed by a council, which is elected, as a rule, for three 
years, and has complete control of city affairs. There is 
usually, as chairman of this council, a president or mayor, 
who, having little power, resembles an English mayor or 
Scottish provost rather than the more important mayor of 
America. In some places, however, certain executive func- 
tions are entrusted to him. Cities, like rural communities, 
enjoy a wide range of authority subject to general cantonal 
laws. Some of them have undertaken to supply water and 
gas or electricity, some own the tramways, Zurich leading the 
way in these municipal enterprises. Neither against coun- 
cillors nor against officials are charges of corruption brought 
even in the largest cities which raise a considerable revenue. 
The councils are sometimes accused of trying too many ex- 
periments or of employing too large a staff, and now and 
then a little jobbing may occur; but the salaries are* small, 
the work done is carefully supervised, and taxation is not ex- 
cessive, though the debt tends to rise. It need hardly be 
said that Swiss thrift is even more characteristic of the rural 
than of the municipal administrators. 

School teachers are elected by the people and usually for 
short terms 2 — a plan which has not been found to work well 

i The rural circumscription called a District (Bezirk), which in- 
cludes a number of communes, is an artificial area, established for 
administrative purposes, and needs no description here. 

2 I was told that the Teachers' Union is apt to protect teachers from 
losing their posts by preventing a commune, whose dismissal of a 



chap, xxvm THE COMMUNE 335 

in Zurich. So in some Protestant cantons the law provides 
for the election of pastors for short terms. 

In the cities elections are apt to be fought upon political 
lines, which, however, are seldom sharply drawn. Con- 
tests are sometimes avoided by conceding to each party a 
fair representation. In rural areas, which are seldom trou- 
bled with questions of general policy, such as those which 
divide individualists and the advocates of municipal social- 
ism, politics are little regarded in the choice of officials, for 
there are not, as in the United States, office-seekers demand- 
ing rewards for their services. 

Local self-government has been in Switzerland a factor of 
prime importance, not only as the basis of the administra- 
tive fabric, but also because the training which the people 
have received from practice/in it has been a chief cause of 
their success in working republican institutions. Nowhere 
in Europe has it been so fully left to the hands of the people. 
The Swiss themselves lay stress upon it, as a means of edu- 
cating the citizens in public work, as instilling the sense of 
civic duty, and as enabling governmental action to be used 
for the benefit of the community without either sacrificing 
local initiative or making the action of the central authority 
too strong and too pervasive. 

The Cantons 

The cantons, twenty-two in number — or rather twenty- 
five, for three are divided into half -cantons, each with its own 
government x — are, like the States of the American Union, 
very unequal in size and population. Grisons has an area 
of 2773 square miles, Bern of 2657, Zug of 92. The popu- 
lation of Bern was (estimate of 1915) 665,000, that of 
Zurich 538,000, while that of Uri was 23,000, and that of 
Glarus 34,000. In fifteen German is the language almost 
exclusively spoken, in three (Neuchatel, Vaud, and Geneva) 
French, in one (Ticino) Italian, in two (Valais and Solo- 
teacher has displeased the profession, from finding another person to 
fill the vacancy. 

1 These three are Unterwalden, divided into Unterwald above the 
wood ( Ob dem Wald ) and Unterwald below the wood ( Nid dem Wald ) , 
Appenzell, divided into Ausser Rhoden and Inner Rhoden, and Basle, 
divided into Country and City (Basel Land and Basel Stadt). 



336 SWITZERLAND pabt n 

thurn) each tongue claims about a half of the inhabitants, 
while in Bern German predominates, as does French in Fri- 
bourg. Three cantons (Unterwalden, Appenzell, and Basle) 
are split up into independent half-cantons, and in each the 
two halves, taken together, hold in the Federal Legislature 
the representation of one canton. 

The rights and powers of a Canton correspond generally 
to those of a State in the American Union and in the Aus- 
tralian Federal Commonwealth, and are greater than those 
of a Canadian Province. It is sovereign in so far as it has 
not yielded up its sovereignty to the Confederation, so that 
in case of doubt as to which possesses any given power, the 
presumption is in favour of the canton. " The cantons are 
sovereign," says the Constitution, " so far as their sover- 
eignty is not limited by the Federal Constitution, and as such 
they exercise all the rights not delegated to the Federal Gov- 
ernment." These powers include taxation (except customs 
duties), education (subject to a certain measure of oversight 
by the Federal Government), industrial legislation, and so 
much of legislation on contractual topics (including trade 
and commerce), and on criminal law, as has not been taken 
over by the Federal Legislature in the exercise of its con- 
current legislative powers. 1 Thus their sphere, though, as 
we shall see, reduced in many respects by the increased legis- 
lative authority conferred on the National Government when 
the latter chooses to exert it, is still wide ; and the hold they 
retain upon the interest and affection of their inhabitants 
is naturally strongest in the older and more conservative 
cantons. 

In describing cantonal political institutions no more need 
be said about the forms democratic government has taken 
than is required to make its practical working intelligible, 
and to explain the nature of the political life which continues 
to flow in the old local channels. 

The cantons, whose differences in detail are too numer- 
ous to be here dealt with, fall into two classes — those ruled 
by primary, and those ruled by representative assemblies. 
Four, viz. two whole cantons (Uri and Glarus) and four 

i A Civil Code for the whole country, in which the old Teutonic cus- 
tomary law has been skilfully combined with the principles of modern 
French laws, was enacted in 1912, and a penal code was in 1919 being 
prepared by a committee of the Federal Legislature. 



chap, xxvni 



THE CANTONS 



half-cantons, all of them small and all among the older can- 
tons, have retained or returned to the primitive Teutonic 
system of government by a primary assembly, in which every 
adult male citizen can speak and vote. 1 The assembly, called 
a Landesgemeinde, recalls the old English Folk Mot, the 
Thing of Norway and Iceland, the Homeric Agora, and the 
Eoman Comitia; while its manner of doing business resem- 
bles that of the Town Meeting in New England. It meets 
once a year in the open air under the presidency of the an- 
nually elected Landamman, enacts laws or ratines those pre- 
viously passed by the Council, passes resolutions, settles cur- 
rent questions such as those that relate to finance and public 
works, and elects both the principal officials, including the 
judges, and (as a sort of standing committee) an Adminis- 
trative Council. In cantons where the number who attend 
the Assembly is not too large to be reached by the voice, every 
one can speak, and can present a proposition. 2 A smaller 
council, which manages the less important current business, 
is chosen by the citizens in local divisions. This is the old- 
est, simplest, and purest form of democracy which the world 
knows. 

Of these four cantons, three, viz. Uri, the two Unter- 
waldens and the two Appenzells (especially Appenzell Inner 
Rhoden), are highly conservative in temper. (This is less 
true of Glarus in which manufacturing industries have 
sprung up.) They are agricultural or pastoral communities 
where men lead simple lives, no one rich, no one abjectly 
poor, all socially equal. They cherish the memories of their 
ancestors who won freedom for them centuries ago, and are 
content to abide in those traditions. The reader will have 
noted that both in the communes and in the cantons there is, 
except to some slight extent in the four Landesgemeinde can- 
tons, where the annually elected Landamman is head of the 
State, no such thing as a single official head of the political 
community, nor indeed any other flavour of monarchy such 

i The view that the Landesgemeinde has, as Freeman and other 
writers have held, descended from the meetings of the early Germans 
described by Tacitus, now finds less favour, and it is rather deemed 
to be a product, during the earlier Middle Age, of the conditions of 
collective life in small and isolated communities. 

2 Subject, in some cantons, to rules respecting notice to be given or 
which require a proposal to have been previously submitted to a 
smaller body. 

VOL. I Z 



338 SWITZERLAND part n 

as the Governorship in an American State. Authority is al- 
ways vested in a Council, the chairman of which is a presid- 
ing officer and nothing more, with no wider opportunities of 
exerting authority than have his colleagues. 

All the other cantons, including the half-cantons Basel 
Land and Basel Stadt, have each its own constitution or 
frame of representative government which its people have 
enacted for themselves, as prescribed by the Federal Con- 
stitution, and which they can change as and when they please, 
subject, however, to the assent of the Federal Government. 
In each a prescribed number of citizens can demand a revi- 
sion, in which case the work is undertaken either by the Great 
Council or by a body specially elected for the purpose, and 
the draft is (as in the American States) submitted to the 
people for their approval. Particular amendments also re- 
quire the approval of a popular vote, elected by all citizens, 
for manhood suffrage has been everywhere adopted. 1 The 
elected legislature is in most cantons called the Great, some- 
times the Cantonal, Council. Current executive business is 
entrusted to a smaller body, consisting of from five to thir- 
teen members, and called in the German-speaking cantons 
the Administrative Council (Begierungs Bath) or the Small 
Council (Kleiner Bath). The higher judges are in most 
cantons appointed by the Great Council, but those of lower 
rank are elected by the people, and always for comparatively 
short terms. Police belongs to the cantons, which are bound 
to execute Federal as well as Cantonal laws. 

This kind of government is, as already observed, every- 
where rooted in a system of self-governing communes, where 
the inhabitants administer all their local affairs, and is as 
completely popular as can well be imagined. The Swiss hav- 
ing reduced to a minimum the powers of any single executive 
official, there is no official to whom a veto power could be 
entrusted. No one can disallow laws, except the people them- 
selves by means of the Referendum, i.e. the right of the citi- 
zens to vote directly upon measures passed by the Cantonal 
Legislatures. To this right I shall presently return, as it 
is an institution applicable to the Confederation also. There 
are, moreover, seven cantons which permit the people, by a 

i The question of extending the suffrage to women was in 1919 being 
raised in Neuchatel and Zurich. 



chap, xxviii CANTONAL GOVEKNMENTS 339 

specified majority, to demand the dissolution and re-election 
of the Great Council as no longer truly representing popular 
sentiment. This resembles the American " Recall " to be 
described in a later chapter. 1 

The members of the Great or Cantonal Council are elected 
in districts and frequently re-elected on the expiry of their 
term, which usually lasts three or four years. The payment 
allotted to them is small. Everywhere in Switzerland, though 
most conspicuously in the smaller rural cantons, salaries are 
extremely low and offer no prize for ambition. This Coun- 
cil, which meets twice a year, is a body so much in the eyes 
of the people that it is not exposed to that distrust which has 
led to the restriction of the powers of American State Legis- 
latures, nor has it favours to dispense such as lie in the gift 
of those assemblies. 2 It exercises a general control of can- 
tonal affairs, votes the budget, makes the laws, supervises the 
administration. Nearly half of the cantons (omitting those 
with a Landesgemeinde) entrust to it the choice of the Exec- 
utive Council, while in the rest the more thoroughly demo- 
cratic plan of giving that function to the people has been 
adopted. 

The Small (or Executive) Council is legally subordinate 
to the Great Council, which can direct it how to act, or re- 
verse its decisions; but its members are admitted to speak 
in the Great Council, and its position and knowledge secure 
for it great influence with that body. It reports, it submits 
measures, it drafts bills when required to do so. It has the 
strength which experience acquired by permanence in office, 
confers, for the persons who compose it are usually re-elected, 
term after term. This is, however, not invariably the case, 
because in some cantons the balance of parties oscillates, and 
an effort may be made to instal adherents of whichever party 
may happen to be dominant. Still, broadly speaking, the 
Executive Council is a business Board with little political 
colour; and good working relations between the two bodies 
seem to subsist equally where the Great Council and where 
the people elect the Executive. The fact that in the latter 
case the Executive holds by an independent title has not, as 

i See chapters on the United States. 

2 Of the Cantonal Judges I shall speak when we come to the judi- 
ciary of the Confederation. 






340 SWITZERLAND pabt n 

some predicted, encouraged it to resist the legislature. 
Though in nearly every canton one or more representatives 
of the minority or minorities find their way on to the Execu- 
tive Council, despite the fact that the vote is taken by a 
" general ticket " over the whole canton, still, in order to as- 
sure the representation of minorities, several cantons have 
adopted systems of proportional representation, for every 
body feels that each important section should have its spokes- 
man and its share of office. 1 Switzerland is specially fitted 
for such a system, because nowhere are so many voters inde- 
pendent, some not reckoning themselves party men, and most 
of them disposed to please themselves rather than their party 
leaders. Opinion, however, has not yet finally declared itself 
for or against the plan. Some cantons have refused consti- 
tutional amendments framed to establish it, its opponents 
observing that it encourages minorities to put forward as can- 
didates not the men, and especially the moderate men, whom 
general opinion will recognize as the best, but the keenest 
partisans who have worked hardest for the party. Without 
proportional representation, men of the former class would 
have been nominated in the hope of their drawing votes from 
the other side, but the latter sort can, under the proportional 
system, be made sure of election anyhow. Hence even those 
who admit the right of minorities to be represented have 
argued that this was attained in a better way under the pres- 
ent disposition of the majority to make room for good candi- 
dates who do not belong to their own party. 

In comparing Swiss with American bodies one must al- 
ways remember how great is the difference in size between the 
average Canton and the average State. In most Swiss can- 
tons all the leading men are known to one another and to 
everybody else so it is easier for the voter to form a judgment 
on the merits of candidates. To serve the Canton has been 
regarded rather as a duty than as a privilege, and as in earlier 
days men were often compelled to accept public office, so now 
some cantons impose a penalty on citizens who neglect to vote. 
There has hitherto been in many cantons no sharp division 
between parties and but little party organization; and in 
the more backward rural cantons the representatives, coming 

i This view is indeed expressly recognized in the Constitutions of 
Bern and Aargau. 



chap, xxvni MODES OF KEPRESENTATION 341 

largely from the less-educated class, are frequently chosen in 
respect not of the political doctrines they profess, but of their 
local reputation and influence. In so far, party counts for 
little in cantonal affairs. But there are also some cantons, 
such as Geneva, where the smallness of the area sustains the 
warmth of political life, and where the element of personal 
leadership comes more fully into play than it does in the 
Assembly of the Confederation. In these, and especially 
wherever the growth of Socialism has alarmed the conserva- 
tive sentiment of the peasantry and the richer townsfolk, 
cantonal elections are fought with spirit upon party lines. 

Government of the Confederation 
The Federal Constitution 

The Constitution of the Confederation was enacted and 
can be changed by the people only, acting both as a Swiss 
Nation and as the peoples of the several cantons. The Legis- 
lature may, if both Houses concur, decide on a revision, and 
then proceed to make it, thereafter submitting it to a popular 
vote. If, however, only one House desires it, or if it is 
demanded by 50,000 qualified citizens, a popular vote is 
taken as to whether there shall be a revision, and if this is 
carried in the affirmative by a majority of citizens voting, 
then, after a new election of the Legislature, the two Houses 
proceed to amendment, and the amended Constitution is sub- 
mitted to the people. If it is approved by a majority of votes 
of the citizens and also by a majority of the cantons, it goes 
into effect. Where no general revision but only a specific 
amendment is proposed, either by both Houses or by 50,000 
citizens, the preliminary vote of the people is not required, 
but the amendment goes straight to the people for acceptance 
or rejection. The 50,000 may either propose their amend- 
ment in the form of a clause or merely state its principle 
and ask the Legislature to put their idea into proper shape. 
The Constitution of 1874 has been amended twelve times be- 
tween 1874 and 1918, ^xve amendments submitted between 
those years having been rejected. 

The Constitution is a longer document than is the Fed- 
eral Constitution of the United States, on which it is largely 
modelled, and enters more fully into details, some of which 



342 SWITZERLAND PA bt n 

belong to the sphere of ordinary rather than to that of consti- 
tutional legislation. Three of its features deserve special 
mention. 

First. — The distribution of powers between the National 
and the Cantonal Governments is generally similar to that 
of the American and Australian Federations. The National 
Government has the control of foreign relations, save that 
the cantons are permitted, subject to Federal approval, to 
make with one another and with neighbouring foreign States 
agreements regarding border and police relations, not being 
of a political nature. 1 It declares war, makes peace, con- 
cludes treaties, manages the national army. (No canton 
may, without Federal permission, maintain a force exceeding 
300 men.) It owns and works all the railways, except the 
Simplon-Loetschberg line from Bern to Domo d' Ossola, and 
some tourist lines running up the mountains. It administers 
all Federal property, takes charge of posts and telegraphs, 
of copyrights, of currency and national finance, of banking 
and of customs duties, controls water-power, and has a 
monopoly of gunpowder and of the production of alcohol. 
It legislates upon commerce (including bankruptcy) and 
upon contracts generally, except those relating to land, which 
are left to the cantons; and has now (as already observed) 
enacted a complete civil code. It determines questions as to 
the meaning and construction of the Constitution, including 
cases in which a canton is alleged to have transgressed that 
instrument. These are exclusive powers. It has also some 
concurrent powers exerciseable conjointly with the cantons, 
and can supervise the action of the cantons in certain fields, 
such as industrial conditions, insurance, highways, the regu- 
lation of the press and education, requiring the cantons to 
provide instruction which shall be compulsory, unsectarian, 
and gratuitous. When it exerts these concurrent powers its 
statutes prevail against those of a canton. 

Secondly. — There is little in the nature of what Ameri- 
cans call a Bill of Eights, far less than in the Constitution of 
the United States. Trial by jury is not mentioned, but cap- 
ital punishment for political offences is forbidden. 

Thirdly. — The conflicts between the Eoman Church and 

1 This provision was designed to prevent any attempt to create an- 
other Sonderbund. 



chap, xxvni FEDEKAL CONSTITUTION 343 

the Protestant parties which so long distracted Switzerland 
have suggested various provisions relating to religion. Free- 
dom of belief and the free exercise of worship " within the 
limits of morality and public order " are guaranteed through- 
out every canton. No one can be compelled to take part in 
any religious society or religious act, nor shall his civil or 
political rights be abridged by any ecclesiastical provisions, 
nor shall religious views absolve from the performance of 
civic duties, nor taxes be required from any one the proceeds 
of which are appropriated to a religious body to which he 
does not belong. No bishopric may be created without the 
consent of the Federal Government. Ecclesiastical jurisdic- 
tion is abolished ; burial-places are to belong to the civil au- 
thorities ; the right of marriage is not to be limited on reli- 
gious or economic grounds. Neither the Jesuits nor any Or- 
der affiliated with them shall exist ; the participation of their 
members in church or school work is forbidden, and the Fed- 
eral Government may extend this prohibition to other reli- 
gious Orders whose action endangers the State or disturbs 
inter-denominational peace. These provisions, however, do 
not inhibit a canton from maintaining what may be called a 
State establishment of religion, and some in fact so do, the 
civil authorities supporting by funds and to some extent 
guiding or controlling the ecclesiastical organization. This 
happens to a greater extent in several Protestant cantons than 
it does in Catholic, because the Roman Church has an organ- 
ization and authority of its own. 

The Frame; of National Government 

The Federal Government consists of four authorities: (a) 
the Legislature, viz. the National Assembly (Bundesver- 
sammlung, Assemblee Federale), which is the supreme rep- 
resentative body; (b) the Executive, viz. the Federal Coun- 
cil (Bundesrath, Conseil Federal), an administrative body of 
seven members; (c) the Judiciary, viz. one Federal Tribunal 
(Bundesgericht) 1 ; (d) the People of the Confederation, 
which, being the final authority and empowered to act by its 
direct vote, has the ultimate control of legislation, and through 
legislation, of the government as a whole. 

1 The Judicial Department is not, however, as will presently appear, 
a "branch of the Government" in the American sense, 



344 SWITZERLAND pabt n 



The Federal Legislature 

The National Assembly consists of two Houses: the Na- 
tional Council (National Rath, Conseil National) and the 
Council of States, i.e. Cantons (Stande Rath, Conseil 
d'&ats). 

The National Council (corresponding to the American 
House of Representatives) is elected by the citizens of the 
cantons in cantonal districts and now (1919) by proportional 
representation. The smallest cantons and the smallest of the 
six half -cantons have each one member, while Bern has 32 
and Zurich 25. The total number is now 189. All are 
elected by manhood suffrage, 1 on the last Sunday in October, 
once in three years, a church being frequently the polling- 
place. Each Chamber sits for three years, there being no 
power of dissolution. It meets regularly four times a year, 2 
March, June, September, and December, choosing its Presi- 
dent and Vice-President for each session, neither being 
eligible for the same office in the next consecutive regular 
session. Each member is paid twenty-five francs (about $5) 
a day for each day when he attends, besides his travelling 
expenses. The Chambers meet at 8 a.m. in summer, at 9 in 
winter, and the sessions seldom last more than three weeks. 

The Council of States, corresponding to the Senate in the 
United States and in Australia, consists of two members from 
each canton, chosen by each canton according to its own laws, 
in most cantons by the people, in others by the Cantonal or 
" Great " Council. The term of service also varies, some 
cantons choosing councillors for one, some for three years, 
while Valais elects for two. Their salaries (nearly every- 
where the same as those of members of the National Council) 
are paid by the cantons. 

For some few purposes, such as the election of the admin- 
istrative Federal Council and of its President, of the Chan- 
cellor, and of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, and also 
of the Federal Tribunal, and also for the determination of 
legal questions, and the granting of pardons, the two Houses 

i Excluding persons who have been deprived of their civic rights for 
crime, and (in some cantons) bankrupts and paupers. 

2 The Federal Council may convoke an extraordinary session should 
any emergency arise. 



chap, xxvni THE FEDEKAL LEGISLATUKE 345 

sit together as a National Assembly, the President of the Na- 
tional Council presiding. 

The powers of the two Houses, legislative, administrative, 
and judicial, are equal, and (as in Australia, hut not in the 
United States) the smaller House, which represents the can- 
tons, is in practice rather the weaker of the two, men of 
energy and ambition preferring to sit in the National Coun- 
cil. There is no provision for deciding an issue on which 
the Houses may differ, but differences are neither frequent 
nor serious, because the Council of States is from its mode 
of choice practically no more conservative than the larger 
House. The ultimate control of legislation reserved to the 
whole people makes this omission unimportant. A member 
of one House cannot sit in the other also, but may hold any 
post in the government of a canton, even that of a judge. 

Each House has what is called a Bureau, composed of the 
President and " scrutateurs " (four in the National Council, 
two in the Council of States). They take the divisions, and, 
with the President, nominate the Committees (called Com- 
missions), unless the House itself does so. These last are 
appointed pro liac vice, there being no standing Committees. 

Members may speak in any one of the three languages, 
German, French, and Italian, and every public document 
is published in all three, though nearly all educated Swiss 
know both German and French, and the Italian members 
can usually speak the latter tongue. 

The normal Swiss member shows just the qualities we 
associate with the Swiss character. He is solid, shrewd, un- 
emotional, or at any rate indisposed to reveal his emotions. 
He takes a practical common-sense and what may be called 
middle-class business view of questions, being less prone than 
is the German to recur to theoretical first principles or than 
is the Frenchman to be dazzled by glittering phrases. Yet 
his way of thinking is, if not more philosophical, rather more 
systematic and more guided by general principles than is that 
of the American or English legislator. 

Within this general type a difference may be noted be- 
tween the German-speaking and the French-speaking Swiss. 
These latter, who are by race partly Celtic, partly Burgun- 
dian, though differentiated from the more purely Celtic 
stock of East Central France through the larger admixture 



346 SWITZERLAND pabt n 

of Teutonic blood and the influence of Teutonic fellow- 
citizens, 1 still remain swifter-minded, more excitable, more 
disposed to acclaim and follow a leader than is the Germanic 
Switzer, jet are therewithal also of a conservative temper, 
not theorists in their politics. The German-speaking or 
" Allemannic " Swiss of Eastern and North Central Switzer- 
land consider themselves to differ materially from the South 
German Swabians north of the Rhine, though this difference 
need not be ascribed to the fact that there is a good deal of 
the old Helvetic (Celtic) blood all over Switzerland. 

These qualities of the individual have given its peculiar 
quality to the Swiss national legislature. It has been the 
most business-like legislative body in the world, doing its 
work quietly and thinking of little else. Each session lasts 
from three to five weeks. There are few set debates and still 
fewer set speeches. Rhetoric is almost unknown; and it is 
at once a cause and a consequence of this fact that manifesta- 
tions of dissent or of approval are rarely heard. Speakers 
are not interrupted and rarely applauded. If after a spirited 
peroration some cries of " Bravo " are heard, the phenomenon 
is noted as unusual. Every member has his desk, and though 
neither of the two halls is so large as to make hearing diffi- 
cult, many members seem in both to pay little attention to 
most of the speeches, usually delivered in a quiet conversa- 
tional tone and with little regard for finish of form. In the 
National Council members speak standing, in the Council 
of States from their seats. 

There are no official stenographers, and the debates are 
but scantily reported, even in the leading newspapers, though 
now and then an important discussion is, by order of the 
Houses, reported verbatim and published. 2 The alternation 
of speeches from German to French and back again reduces 
the vivacity of debate. The German speakers are said to be 
more long-winded than the French. Excellent order is kept ; 
obstruction is unknown ; and divisions are much less frequent 
than in the British Parliament or in Congress. In fact the 

i Western Switzerland constituted in the earlier Middle Ages the 
kingdom of Transjurane Burgundy, formed by the Teutonic Burgun- 
dian tribes who came from the Middle Rhineland. It stretched from 
the Rhine above Basle to the Pennine Alps. 

2 This happened occasionally when important deliverances of opinion 
were made during and after the late European war. 



chap, xxviii THE FEDERAL LEGISLATURE 347 

proceedings, just because they are so business-like, because 
rhetoric is not in fashion, and men think rather of what they 
have to say than of how to say it, would be pronounced dull 
by a French Parliamentarian. There is in them little of that 
cut and thrust, that brisk repartee, that personal element of 
invective and countercharge which adds keenness and pun- 
gency to all debates, and in which members of other legisla- 
tures find their most constant source of interest. 

The very aspect of each House suggests reasons for this. 
Each hall is semicircular, and members of the same party 
do not necessarily sit together: indeed they usually sit by 
cantons. There is no bench for a Ministry nor for an Oppo- 
sition, since neither exists. The executive officials, those 
Federal Councillors who will be presently mentioned, have 
seats on a dais right and left of the President, but, not be- 
ing members, they are not party leaders. Thus that strife 
for office and the sweets of office felt as always present in the 
background of debates in the assemblies of England, France, 
and other parliamentary countries, finds little place in the 
Swiss legislature. 

Attendance is regular and punctual. A member absenting 
himself without strong reasons would be deemed neglectful, 
and unless he furnishes such a reason for non-appearance at 
roll-call, does not receive payment for the day. The city 
of Bern, where the legislature meets, presents few counter- 
attractions of business or pleasure to distract members from 
their duties ; and rarely does it happen that any one is sum- 
moned by telegraph to a division. 

Elections to the Federal Houses raise, for reasons to be 
presently stated, little popular excitement, and a member 
who seeks re-election is usually returned, for there is no great 
oscillation in the strength of parties, and the Swiss are the 
least changeful of all democracies, not lightly withdrawing 
a confidence once given. Neither do they worry their repre- 
sentatives, who might well be envied by French deputies or 
American Congressmen. 

There are few constitutional limitations on the power of 
the legislature, except of course those that are involved in 
the very nature of a federation the component parts of which 
retain legislative power. Such limitations, not thought nec- 
essary when the Constitutions of 1848 and 1874 were framed. 



348 SWITZERLAND pabt n 

are deemed even less needed now, because the power of the 
people can, through the Referendum, be invoked to overrule 
the legislature. Moreover, just as the small size of the coun- 
try, the small numbers in the legislative bodies, and the tra- 
ditionally strict standard of honesty by which politicians are 
judged, combine to render needless provisions against the 
abuse of legislative functions for private ends, so public 
opinion would at once check any attempt by the Councils 
to extend their powers beyond the limits the Constitution 
prescribes. 

The parties play a role far inferior to that of a party in 
France or England, because in the executive sphere the 
Houses cannot displace the Ministers, and in the legislative 
sphere the Houses have not the last word, since that belongs 
to the people. In both Chambers accordingly the parties 
have but a loose organization, for though each has a leader his 
functions and authority are slender. There are no whips 
nor any summonses like those which in England are daily 
issued to members of the party. A general concurrence of 
opinion upon leading principles suffices to keep each party 
pretty well together upon the graver issues raised in the 
Assembly; while upon points which do not involve party 
principles, a member votes as he pleases. The Constitu- 
tion declares that the member is not a delegate to be fettered 
by instructions from his canton or his constituency, and 
neither colleagues nor constituents complain unless he can 
be supposed either to have sinister motives or to be practically 
renouncing the doctrines for which the party stands. When, 
however, offices have to be conferred by vote of the Houses, it 
becomes necessary that a party should meet in caucus to agree 
on the candidate it will support. These are important gath- 
erings, since the seven Federal Councillors chosen every three 
years, and the twenty-four Federal judges, chosen every six 
years, are appointed by the two Houses sitting together. 

To explain how legislation is cared for, though the duty 
and function of preparing and proposing it belongs neither 
to a party leader nor, as in the United States, to the Chair- 
man of a Committee, let it be said that measures coming be- 
fore the Chambers are of two kinds. Some are administra- 
tive, being such as the Executive in the course of its func- 
tions finds necessary. These are drafted and submitted by 



chap, xxvm FEDERAL LEGISLATION 349 

the Federal Council, one or more of whose members attend 
to explain and recommend them. Others, of wider scope, 
may be demanded by public opinion, or by the wishes of the 
dominant party. At the instance of any member a resolu- 
tion may be passed requesting the Federal Council to address 
itself to the subject and prepare a Bill. When so drafted, 
a Bill goes on its way through the Houses, sometimes, if it is 
complex or if enquiry is needed, being referred to a Commit- 
tee. Financial Bills are of course in a special sense the 
business of the Federal Council, which has charge of revenue 
and expenditure. No difficulty seems to be found in making 
legislation keep abreast of the wishes and needs of the peo- 
ple. Indeed, it more frequently goes ahead of than falls 
behind those wishes. 

There are in the National Legislature few Bills of the 
category called " private " or " local " in England and Amer- 
ica, partly because these matters largely belong to the can- 
tonal legislatures or to the Communes, partly because nearly 
all the great railways have been taken over by the Federal 
Government, and any considerable new railway enterprise 
would be undertaken by it. Such concessions as remain to 
be granted, e.g. for those tourist railways up mountains which 
have wrought such mischief to the scenery of Switzerland, 
seldom offer a prospect of profits so large as to involve the 
dangers which the granting of concessions brings in some 
countries, and against which the British Parliament found it 
needful to provide by stringent rules. Thus a formidable 
source of corruption is absent. What has been said above 
regarding individual politicians may be said of the legisla- 
ture generally. It is free from even the suspicion of being 
used for the purposes of private gain. " Lobbying " (if 
any) is on a small scale. It may be thought that the cus- 
toms tariff would here, as in the United States, and to a less 
extent in some European countries, give an opening for the 
pressure of selfish interests applying sordid inducements. 
The Swiss tariff was till recently a low one, as compared 
with those of its great neighbours, and originally a tariff for 
revenue, since the Federal Government did not then levy 
direct taxes. Though agriculturists and manufacturers are 
said to have begun to press demands for higher protective im- 
port duties, neither section has as yet done so in an illegiti- 



350 SWITZERLAND part ii 

mate way, nor have rich manufacturers made those large con- 
tributions to party funds which became a scandal in the 
United States. Nor could they, seeing that there are no 
party funds except the trifling sums raised for election 
expenses. 

Had there been between 1874 and 1919 a strong and 
compact Opposition, instead of three weak Oppositions, only 
one of which was really keen, proceedings in the Assembly 
would have been more lively, and the ruling party itself 
would have been knit more closely together. But the com- 
paratively loose order in which that party was wont to march, 
and its disposition not to monopolize offices or to try bold 
experiments, mitigated the criticisms of the three Opposi- 
tions. They did not set themselves to hamper the Adminis- 
tration, so the wheels of progress were not clogged as in most 
parliamentary countries. The habit of considering meas- 
ures in a non-partisan spirit has been wholesome for the na- 
tion, and did much to allay the hotter party strife which 
went on in a few cantons. 

Why did not the dominant party, being so large, break 
up into sections ? Partly because there were few motives of 
personal ambition leading to the creation of groups follow- 
ing a leader; partly because the existence of a compact, 
though comparatively small, minority, held together by reli- 
gious sentiment, made them feel the need for cohesion. In 
the background there was always standing the recollection 
of the Sonderbund War. Hence constant vigilance to hold 
in check any designs the Catholic hierarchy might form. 

To-day — I have been speaking so far of Switzerland up 
to 1920 — one hears it remarked that the intellectual level 
of the legislature has been declining during the last twenty 
years, and that public life shows fewer eminent figures. 
Welti, Ruchonnet, and Numa Droz are cited as instances 
of leaders who have not left successors of equal mark. If 
this be so, it may be partly due to the fact that the Swiss, 
having settled the great constitutional and political questions 
which occupied them from 1830 till 1874, were living in 
quieter times not so fit to call out men's powers. Those who 
succeed a great generation which fought and suffered for 
high principles usually fall below its moral and intellectual 
level, as happened in England after 1660, and in Italy when 



chap, xxviii THE FEDEKAL EXECUTIVE 351 

the heroes of the Risorgimento had passed away. Nor is it to 
be forgotten that in Switzerland, as elsewhere, the develop- 
ment of manufacturing industries and of commerce and 
finance opened up careers which many men of talent and 
ambition find more attractive. This is one of the reasons 
which may be assigned for the decline in legislatures observed 
in most countries. Apart from this want of brilliance, 
neither of the two Houses is open to serious criticism. They 
do their work efficiently; they maintain a good standard of 
decorum and manners ; they retain the respect of the people ; 
they work harmoniously with the Executive. 

The Federal Executive 

The Federal Council (Bundesrath) is one of the institu- 
tions of Switzerland that best deserves study. In no other 
modern republic is executive power entrusted to a Council 
instead of to a man, and in no other free country has the 
working Executive so little to do with party politics. The 
Council is not a Cabinet, like that of Britain and the coun- 
tries which have imitated her cabinet system, for it does not 
lead the Legislature, and is not displaceable thereby. 
Neither is it independent of the Legislature, like the Execu- 
tive of the United States and of other republics which have 
borrowed therefrom the so-called " Presidential system," and 
though it has some of the features of both those schemes, it 
differs from both in having no distinctly partisan character. 
It stands outside party, is not chosen to do party work, does 
not determine party policy, yet is not wholly without some 
party colour. 

This interesting and indeed unique institution consists of 
seven persons, elected by the Federal Assembly for three 
years. One of the seven is annually chosen by the Federal 
Assembly to be President of this Council, and another to be 
Vice-President, and neither may be re-elected to the same 
post for the following year. Not more than one Councillor 
can be chosen from any one canton. Custom prescribes that 
one Councillor shall always come from Bern and another 
from Zurich ; and one is usually chosen from the important 
French-speaking canton Vaud. One is also, again by custom, 
taken from a Roman Catholic canton, and (very often) one 



352 SWITZERLAND part n 

from the Italian-speaking Ticino. They cannot, during their 
term of office, sit in either House nor hold any other Federal 
nor any Cantonal post. To each member an administrative 
department is allotted, for which he is primarily responsible, 
but the Council meets constantly as a sort of Cabinet for the 
discussion of important business ; all decisions emanate from 
it as a whole, as does the elaborate report which it annually 
presents to the legislature; and it speaks as a whole to for- 
eign Powers. Its members appear, but do not vote, in both 
branches of the legislature. When business relating to a 
particular department is being there considered, the Coun- 
cillor who manages that department attends, answers ques- 
tions, gives explanations, and joins in debate. 

The Councillor chosen President for the year has no more 
power than his colleagues, and is really only their Chair- 
man. But he bears the title of President of the Confedera- 
tion (Bundespraesident), is the first citizen of the nation, 
and represents it on all ceremonial occasions. His salary is 
26,500 francs a year, that of each of his colleagues being 
25,000 (about £1000, $5000). 

Besides its general administrative (including financial) 
work, the charge of foreign relations and of the army, the 
Council supervises the conduct of the permanent civil service 
of the Confederation. 

Another most useful function is that, already referred to, 
of drafting Bills to be brought before the Legislature. When 
a proposal suggesting legislation for a specified purpose is 
accepted, the Council prepares a Bill, and it frequently ad- 
vises either House, at any stage, regarding the form or sub- 
stance of measures submitted. It has also judicial duties, 
for since there are not administrative Courts, like those of 
France or Italy, such cases as arise regarding the behaviour 
of officials are not within the sphere of the Federal Tribunal, 
but are dealt with by the Council, subject, as a rule, to an 
appeal to the Legislature. 1 

The Federal Councillors are usually re-elected so long as 
they desire to serve. Between 1848 and 1919 there was only 
one exception to this rule, which had a good effect in sus- 

i In 1919 a plan for the creation of a tribunal to deal with adminis- 
trative cases involving complaints against officials was being consid- 
ered in pursuance of a constitutional amendment passed in 1914. 



chap, xxvni THE FEDEKAL COUNCIL 353 

taining friendly personal relations. Though they have been 
active politicians, they are chosen in respect of their capacity 
as administrators, not as speakers or tacticians. Since the 
National Assembly is the school of public business always 
before the eyes of the country, and in which men can show 
their ability to their associates, it is usually from among their 
own members that the Houses select. As there has been 
always (since 1891) one Catholic, so a Liberal has been fre- 
quently chosen, although the majority was Radical from 
1848 till 1919. Eloquence is neither needed nor sought for 
in a Federal Councillor. It is administrative skill, mental 
grasp, good sense, tact and temper that recommend a candi- 
date. That selections are well made appears from the prac- 
tice of re-election. 1 

Were it their function to initiate and advocate policy, this 
continuity would be scarcely possible. Policy, however, be- 
longs to the Assembly ; though in practice the Council by its 
knowledge and experience exerts much influence even on 
questions of general principle, while details are usually left 
to it. In foreign affairs it has a pretty free hand, but the 
scrupulously neutral attitude of the country on these ques- 
tions has been so plainly prescribed by the geographical posi- 
tion of Switzerland between four great military neighbours 
that differences of opinion on that subject seldom arose. 2 
The bulk of its work is administrative, including not only 
the management of affairs distinctly Federal, such as the 
collection and expenditure of national revenue and the man- 
agement of national undertakings, of which the railways are 
an important branch, but also a general supervision of the 
Cantonal Governments in order to secure that Federal law is 
adequately enforced everywhere. This task, always delicate 
and sometimes difficult, has been successfully performed be- 
cause the Assembly supports the Council, and the Council has 
not only military force at its command, but can also reduce 
a canton to submission by withholding any subvention due 
to it from the Federal Treasury. 

So important and multifarious is the work performed by 
the Council that visitors were, before the European War, 

1 One is sometimes told that this practice makes it hard to get rid 
of a Councillor who is no longer equal to his work. 

2 During the war of 1914-1918 difficulties did arise, but into these 
I need not enter, for the circumstances were most exceptional. 

VOL. I 2 A 



354 SWITZERLAND pabt n 

1914, surprised to find how small was the official staff at- 
tached to the several departments, and how limited the 
accommodation provided for the Councillors and their secre- 
taries. Even the plainness of the arrangements that existed 
at Washington fifty years ago did not reach this austere 
republican simplicity. 

A peculiar feature distinguishing this Swiss Executive 
from any other is that though the Council acts as one body, 
differences in opinion are permitted and allowed to become 
known. Its members occasionally speak' on opposite sides 
in the legislature. Such differences rarely cause trouble, 
because if they turn on points of administration, these are 
compromised or perhaps settled in accordance either with 
the opinion of the Councillor in whose sphere the matter lies, 
or with what seems the wish of the Assembly, while if they 
touch legislation they are determined by that body. I have 
nevertheless heard it remarked that the need for compromise 
where views differ sometimes prevents a question from being 
dealt with on broad principles. 

Not less surprising, to a foreign observer, than these in- 
ternal relations of the Councillors, occasional dissidence with 
practically unbroken co-operation, are the relations of the 
Federal Council to the Assembly. Legally the servant of 
the Legislature, it exerts in practice almost as much author- 
ity as do English, and more than do some French Cabinets, 
so that it may be said to lead as well as to follow. It is a 
guide as well as an instrument, and often suggests as well as 
drafts measures. Nevertheless the Assembly occasionally 
overrules the Council, reversing its decisions or materially 
altering its Bills; and this makes no difference to the con- 
tinuance in office of the Council nor to the confidence it re- 
ceives, such is the power of usage and tradition in a practical 
people where public opinion expects every one to subordinate 
his own feelings to the public good, and where personal am- 
bition has played a smaller part than in any other free coun- 
try since 1848. 

It is sometimes alleged that the influence of party has been 
visible in the tendency of the majority in the Assembly to 
support the Federal Council even when it may have gone 
astray. The Council has no power over that majority, for 
it cannot, like a British Cabinet, threaten a dissolution ; nor 



chap, xxviii WORKING OF THE COUNCIL 355 

has it the indirect control over members which the American 
Executive may exert by obliging or disobliging members in 
the matter of appointments, because appointments are few 
and not lucrative. The suggestion rather is that as the ma- 
jority has chosen, and is therefore in a sense responsible for, 
the Federal Council, it feels bound to stand by it, right or 
wrong. The reluctance, however, to lower the authority of 
the Executive department by scolding it for a past error of 
judgment when it has turned into a new and safer path, is a 
pardonable and (within limits) even a useful tendency. Al- 
though a dominant party is usually the better for having a 
strong Opposition to confront it, there has been seldom any 
disposition in the Federal Council or the majority of the 
Assembly, to abuse their respective powers in pressing busi- 
ness through. The existence of the Referendum would any- 
how prevent them from using those powers to pass measures 
against the popular will. But apart from that peculiar in- 
stitution, one can hardly imagine a majority in Switzerland 
making itself a tyrant, since nowhere would public opinion 
more promptly interfere to protect a minority. The dispo- 
sition to settle differences by arrangement is a noteworthy 
feature of the country. 

In its constitutional position and working the Federal 
Council has been deemed one of the conspicuous successes 
of the Swiss system, for it secures three great advantages, 
specially valuable in a country, governed by the whole 
people. 

It provides a body which is able not only to influence and 
advise the ruling Assembly without lessening its responsibil- 
ity to the citizens, but which, because it is non-partisan, can 
mediate, should need arise, between contending parties, ad- 
justing difficulties and arranging compromises in a spirit of 
conciliation. 

It enables proved administrative talent to be kept in the 
service of the nation, irrespective of the personal opinions 
of the Councillors upon the particular issues which may for 
the moment divide parties. Men opposed to the main prin- 
ciples on which the Assembly desires the government to be 
conducted could not indeed profitably administer in accord- 
ance with those principles, for a total want of sympathy with 
the laws passed would affect them in applying those laws. 



356 SWITZEKLAND 



part n 



But where differences are not fundamental, or do not touch 
the department a particular Minister deals with, why lose 
your best servant because he does not agree with you on mat- 
ters outside the scope of his work? As well change your 
physician because you differ from him in religion. 

It secures continuity in policy and permits traditions to 
be formed. The weak side of continuity and traditions is 
the tendency for administration to become " groovy " and so 
to fall behind new needs and neglect new methods. This is 
hardly a danger in Switzerland, where ministers are always 
accessible, and are in constant touch with the Assembly, while 
it is a real gain to avoid the dislocations which the arrival of 
new ministers causes, and to save the time lost while they 
are learning their duties. 

To secure these two latter advantages is comparatively 
easy in countries like the (late) German Empire or Japan, 
where ministers hold office at the pleasure of the monarch 
rather than of the Parliament. They are to some extent 
secured in England and Erance through the existence of a 
permanent non-political head of each great branch of the 
Civil Service, whose experience illumines the darkness of the 
political minister who brings no previous knowledge, and per- 
haps nothing but fluent speech or (in former days) family 
connections, to his new functions. Switzerland is, however, 
the only democracy which has found a means of keeping its 
administrators practically out of party politics. 

The Federal Judiciary 

The Judiciary is in Switzerland a less important part of 
the machinery of Federal government than it is in the United 
States or in the Australian Commonwealth, and may there- 
fore be briefly dealt with. 

There is only one Federal Tribunal, consisting of four- 
teen judges appointed by the two Houses of the Legislature 
sitting together as a National Assembly. The term of office 
is six years, for in Switzerland democratic doctrine forbids 
extended grants of power, but the custom of re-electing a 
judge who has discharged his functions efficiently has estab- 
lished what is practically a life tenure. Though no qualifi- 
cations are prescribed by law, pains are taken to select men 



chap, xxvhi FEDERAL JUDICIARY 357 

of legal learning and ability, and while political predilec- 
tions may sometimes be present, it is not alleged that they 
have injured the quality of the bench, any more than the 
occasional action of like influences tells on the general confi- 
dence felt in England and (as respects the Federal Courts) 
in the United States in the highest courts of those countries. 
The salaries, like all others in Switzerland, are low, £600 
($3000) a year, with an additional £40 for the President. 

The Tribunal sits at Lausanne, a concession to the senti- 
ment of the French-speaking cantons, since the Legislature 
has its home at German-speaking Bern. The jurisdiction 
of the Federal Court is less strictly defined by the Consti- 
tution than is the case in America or Australia, for the 
Legislature has received and used a power to extend it. 1 
Originally created to deal with cases to which the Confedera- 
tion or a canton is a party, its competence has been extended 
to other classes of suits, and it may be resorted to, by the 
agreement of litigants, in cases where the sum involved ex- 
ceeds a prescribed amount. It has criminal jurisdiction, 
with a jury, in cases of treason or of other offences against 
Federal law. Its power further extends to certain classes of 
civil appeals (where the sum involved is of a certain amount) 
from Cantonal Courts, and also to matters of public law and 
the rights of citizens under either the Federal or a Cantonal 
Constitution. There are no inferior Federal Courts, because 
the bulk of judicial work continues to be discharged by the 
Cantonal judges, nor has the Tribunal (as in the United 
States) a staff of its own all over the country to execute 
judgments, this duty being left to the Federal Council, 2 act- 
ing (in practice) through the Cantonal authorities. 

In two respects this Swiss Court differs materially from 
the Federal Judiciary of the United States. Those cases 
which are in continental Europe called Administrative, i.e. 
cases in which the application of administrative provisions 
is involved or in which Government officials are either charged 
with some fault or are sued by a private person for some 
alleged wrong, have been reserved for the Federal Council 
or Federal Assembly, whereas in the United States, as in 

i The powers of the Tribunal are stated in Arts. CX. to CXI V. of the 
Constitution, in terms which it is not easy to abridge, except in a gen- 
eral and somewhat vague way. 

2 Constitution, Art. CII. 5. 



358 SWITZERLAND PA bt n 

England, they are dealt with by the ordinary courts. 1 Sec- 
ondly, the Swiss Tribunal cannot declare any Federal law 
or part of a law to be invalid as infringing some provision of 
the Federal Constitution. It may annul a Cantonal law as 
transgressing either the Federal or a Cantonal Constitution, 
but the Constitution expressly assigns to the Federal Legis- 
lature the right of interpreting both the Federal Constitu- 
tion itself and all laws passed thereunder, so that it can put 
its own construction on every law which it has itself passed, 
without the intervention of any judicial authority to correct 
it. This principle does not commend itself to American 
lawyers, who hold that the powers of a legislature cannot 
go beyond those which the people have by the Constitution 
conferred upon it, and that there can be no security for the 
observance of that fundamental instrument if the interpre- 
tation of the people's intentions, as therein expressed, is left 
to be determined by the legislature which has passed a statute 
alleged to contravene the Constitution, because that would 
make the violating body the judge in its own case. This 
view, however, does not prevail in continental Europe, where 
republican Swiss and French, as well as monarchist Ger- 
man, lawyers have clung to the tradition which subordinates 
the judiciary to the executive and legislative powers. Two 
very high Swiss authorities, while admitting the American 
system to be more logical, observed to me that in Switzerland 
no harm had resulted, and that the rights of the people could 
not be seriously infringed, because they can be at any time 
invoked to protect themselves. If a law of the National 
Assembly is arraigned as a breach of the Constitution, a de- 
mand may be made forthwith under the Eeferendum for its 
submission to a popular vote, which will either reject or con- 
firm the law. This remedy is, however, not available as 
regards those laws which the Assembly has declared to be 
either " urgent " or " not of general application." In these 
the Assembly remains uncontrolled, save by public opinion. 
Constitutions are in Continental Europe not so strictly in- 
terpreted, nor constitutional provisions so carefully distin- 
guished from ordinary laws, as has been the case in America, 

i A private citizen who is party in a civil suit may also contest be- 
fore a court the validity of a Cantonal law alleged to transgress the 
Federal Constitution. 



CHAP. XXVHI 



POWERS OF JUDICIARY 359 



whose example has in this respect influenced Canada and 
Australia, but not Switzerland. 

It may be added that as the judges of the Federal Tri- 
bunal are appointed for six years only, there is an objection 
to entrusting them with the power of disallowing legislation, 
which does not exist where, as in the United States National 
Government, the judges are appointed for life. The Amer- 
ican judge is independent; the Swiss judge might conceivably 
be influenced by the wish to secure his own re-election. 

Here let me return to the Cantons to add a few words on 
their judges. 

The Cantonal Judiciary 

In the cantons we find (except in the smallest) a Court 
of Appeals, Courts of First Instance, and Justices of the 
Peace. All are chosen either by the people voting directly 
(this of course includes the Landesgemeinde cantons) or by 
the Cantonal (" Great ") Council, never by the smaller or 
Executive Council. The salaries are low, and though the 
term is short, usually three or four years, the custom of 
re-election prevails. There has been a controversy over the 
respective merits of these two modes of choice, some arguing 
that the Council can form a better judgment on the technical 
capacity of a candidate, others replying that the people are 
more likely to be free from personal favouritism or political 
bias. This assumes what is perhaps generally true in Swit- 
zerland, but would not be true in America, that the people 
will not be guided in their action by party organizations. 1 
The persons selected are described as being usually of high 
character and competent, some cantons requiring evidence of 
considerable legal attainments. If they are not always eru- 
dite, it must be remembered that less value is attached to pro- 
fessional learning and " scientific " law in Switzerland than 
in such countries as England, France, and America, not only 
because the bar holds a less important place, but also because 
the Swiss dislike technicalities and refinements, preferring 
a rough, simple, " practical," or, as they say, " popular " 
(volJcsthumlich) sort of justice. The inferior courts are 

i In Zurich, and probably elsewhere also, the Bar try to secure good 
selections- 



360 SWITZERLAND PA bt n 

expected to decide on the broad merits of the questions that 
come before them. Arbitration is largely used to avoid 
litigation. Unsatisfactory as the election of judges by the 
people for short terms has proved to be in the States of the 
American Union, it is not considered to work badly in the 
cantons, where it is argued that the Council might choose 
no better, that the people, not being influenced by political 
motives, have no interest except that of finding a trustworthy 
fellow-citizen to settle their disputes, that the vigilance which 
a small community exercises provides a safeguard for good 
conduct, and that there is no single high cantonal official, 
resembling the Governor in an American State, in whom the 
power of appointment could be vested with a certainty of 
making him responsible for its exercise. As an unfortunate 
choice can be remedied at the next election, displacement by 
such a method as impeachment has not seemed needful. 

The institution of the jury, long prized in English-speak- 
ing countries, where it is a natural growth of the soil, is in 
Switzerland little used in civil cases except for those relating 
to the press, and in criminal trials for grave offences, but 
justice is made popular by sometimes appointing non-pro- 
fessional judges and by the practice of associating lay 
assessors with the regular judge and there are cantons in 
which it is administered gratis, or where legal advice and 
assistance are provided for the poor. Zurich tried to reduce 
the cost of trials by throwing the profession of advocacy open 
to all the world with no security for legal knowledge, but the 
experiment failed. 1 

The Swiss find no fault with their Cantonal judiciary. 
It may be, except in cities like Geneva or Basle, less learned 
than that of Germany, but it serves the everyday needs of the 
people. Its members are never charged with corruption, if 
sometimes with favouritism, nor are they below the level of 
the advocates who appear before them. Where a plaintiff 
(or a defendant) is a native of the canton where the suit is 
being tried, and the other party an outsider, the judge is said 
to be disposed to lean towards the native, because he fears 
to displease his fellow-citizens of the same canton. (In the 
United States, where the litigant parties belong to different 
States, a Federal Court can be resorted to.) The impres- 

i Dr. E. Ztircher in Moderne Demokratie, p. 16. 



chap, xxvni THE CIVIL SEEVICE 361 

sion left on the observer's mind is that choice by the Great 
Council is safer than choice by the vote of the citizens, for 
the popularly elected judge may be influenced, consciously or 
unconsciously, by the wish to avoid offending a prominent 
neighbour. Taking purity and promptitude, cheapness and 
certainty (i.e. the strict observance of settled principles and 
rules) to be (apart from judicial honesty) the four chief 
merits of any judicial system, the results of the Swiss system 
may be deemed as good as or better than those of England 
or of the United States as respects the three former of these 
requisites, although in point of legal science both of the latter 
may surpass the judges in the Courts of the smaller cantons. 



The Civil Service and the Army 

The Federal officials, both in the capital and throughout 
the country, are (except a very few of the most important 
which lie in the gift of the National Assembly) appointed 
by the Federal Council, and are dismissible by it for any 
dereliction of duty. Appointments to the higher posts are 
for a term of three years ; but reappointment is so much the 
rule that the Civil Service may be described as practically 
permanent. Very rarely is any one dismissed for political 
reasons ; nor do such reasons play any great part in selection, 
though there may be a tendency to prefer those who belong 
to the dominant party. Thus nothing resembling the Spoils 
System of the United States exists, a fact, however, attribut- 
able also to the meagreness of salaries and to the lack of the 
social importance which office bestows in France and Ger- 
many. Places are not worth struggling for, and public opin- 
ion would reprehend any attempt to appoint incompetent 
men for party reasons. Till the railways were acquired by 
the Confederation, the Civil Service, consisting practically of 
postal and customs officials, was small, and did not give, by 
demands for higher pay, the sort of trouble which has arisen 
in Australia among railway workers and in England among 
postal and telegraph clerks. 

Before quitting the Civil Service, a word must be said of 
its relation to political life. Federal officials cannot enter 
the Federal Legislature, nor, as a general rule, can Can- 
tonal officials sit in a Cantonal Legislature; but either set of 



362 SWITZERLAND part n 

officials can sit in the other, i.e. Cantonal officials can and do 
frequently sit in the Federal Legislature, Federal officials 
much more rarely (and, I think, only with the leave of their 
superior) in a Cantonal. There are, however, exceptions. 
In Zurich, Cantonal officials may sit in the " Great " or Can- 
tonal Council, and there review the proceedings of their of- 
ficial superiors, the Executive Council, although the mem- 
bers of that Executive Council are not themselves eligible for 
election to the Cantonal (Great) Council, but can only speak 
in it as Ministers. Even the judges of the highest Cantonal 
Court are eligible for the Council of their canton, being ex- 
cluded from voting only when their own report is under dis- 
cussion. This is a singular departure from the principle of 
separating the legislative from the executive department, the 
function of administering from the function of supervising. 
But the Swiss are not meticulous, allowing many deviations 
from principle to happen when no harm results. Custom 
and public opinion keep things fairly straight. 

Both Federal and Cantonal employees are permitted to 
take part in political agitation and to work at elections. 
They are not indeed expected, as has happened in the United 
States, to be foremost in canvassing and organizing on behalf 
of the party which has appointed them, nor have they the 
motive of personal interest which exists there, for they are 
mostly re-elected or reappointed after the expiry of a term of 
service, not for party reasons, but because it is not the habit 
to disturb an actual occupant. Participation in party work 
by officials would be pernicious in England and is pernicious 
in America. In this singular Kepublic, however, no great 
practical evil seems to have followed. Though the Federal 
Government employs a host of voters on the railways, it has 
acquired, these did not for some years apply pressure to 
members in order to obtain a rise in wages, and gave no 
trouble otherwise. It must, however, be added that when 
the State purchased the railways it forthwith raised the 
wages, theretofore too low, and it has been suggested that 
the prospect of a rise influenced some of the votes by which 
the people approved that purchase. More recently repre- 
sentatives have, at the instance of railway employees, been 
pressing the Federal Council for higher pay. 

Only in a few of the large cantons is there any consider- 



chap, xxvm THE FEDERAL ARMY 363 

able body of civil employees, besides, of course, the police 
and those engaged in collecting taxes or executing public 
works. What has been said of the Federal Civil Service 
applies generally to these also. Salaries are so low that there 
is no such competition for governmental posts as in France, 
and the Swiss aversion to whatever can be called " bureau- 
cracy " prevents their multiplication. Neither is there such 
abuse of patronage for political purposes as exists in France 
or Canada or the United States. Appointments are made by 
the Executive Council of the canton, and in cities by the 
Municipal Council. Though some cantons prescribe quali- 
fications for posts requiring scientific or legal knowledge, no 
great stress is laid on such knowledge. Popular sentiment 
does not favour pensions, partly perhaps because the Civil 
Service is not legally a permanent one, but some cantons 
offer their employees a subvention designed to encourage them 
to insure their lives. Taking the service as a whole, it is 
both competent and honest, though less highly trained than 
that of Germany. 

The Army is an important branch of the national admin- 
istration, and its organization has at times given rise to con- 
troversies. Every citizen is liable to serve from his twen- 
tieth to his thirty-second year in the regular effective force 
called elite (auszug), in which he is called out yearly for 
manoeuvres after having received a thorough initial training. 
At thirty-two he passes into what may be called the Reserve 
— Landwehr and Landsturm — until the age of forty-four. 
This universal obligation to serve which had come down from 
early days was never disputed, because the people felt that, 
standing between great military nations, they must be pre- 
pared to defend their neutrality, not to add that the tradi- 
tion of service in foreign armies, which had lasted from the 
fifteenth century till forbidden by the Constitution of 1848, 
had made the career of arms familiar. 1 The law of 1907, 
which now regulates military service, was accepted by the 
people on a Referendum. The cantons appoint the officers 
up to the rank of major, these being in some cantons elected. 
Officers of higher rank are appointed by the Federal Coun- 

i Every soldier keeps his arms and accoutrements in his own house, 
the pride of a Swiss in his arms being an old tradition. This accel- 
erates mobilization. 



364 SWITZERLAND pabt n 

cil. Complaints have been from time to time made regarding 
favouritism, personal rather than political, in appointments, 
but on the whole the army may be deemed efficient and popu- 
lar. The peasants in particular enjoy their term of training, 
and Socialists willingly become officers. The total strength 
of the elite was (in 1919) about 140,000, and that of the 
Landwehr about 60,000. The total cost of the army was 
£1,772,000, about one-third of the whole expenditure of the 
Confederation. 

Closely connected with the supreme need of a country's 
defence is the duty of so directing foreign policy as to main- 
tain good economic relations with its neighbours. Switzer- 
land is almost the only European State that has no tempta- 
tions to increase its territory, for that would be possible only 
if the people of Yorarlberg, or of Tirol, asked to be admitted 
to the Confederation, 1 or if France were to yield the part 
of Savoy which lies south of Lake Leman. Having no sea- 
coast, it depends for food and for coal upon the goodwill of 
Germany, France, and Italy, and needs access through them 
to the markets of the outer world. Thus, though the scope 
of Swiss foreign relations is limited to few subjects, and 
though its lines are prescribed by obvious needs, skill is re- 
quired to enable a small State to hold its own between neigh- 
bours often grasping and always mutually jealous. Such 
skill has generally been found available, nor has courage been 
lacking to defend the right of asylum extended to revolu- 
tionist refugees driven from their own countries. Questions 
of foreign policy have seldom led to serious political con- 
troversies over principles ; and even in criticizing the methods 
used and the particular steps taken, public opinion has been 
temperate. In respect both of defence and of foreign rela- 
tions, two branches of government in which democracies are 
commonly supposed to be inefficient or unstable, the Swiss 
have shown themselves as consistent and firm as their dif- 
ficult position permits. Their permanent attitude to the 

i In 1919 the people of Vorarlberg expressed their wish to be ad- 
mitted as a Canton, but though the proposal had much to recommend 
it, it found no general favour among the Swiss, some of whom did not 
desire to strengthen the Roman Catholic party, while in the French- 
speaking districts a certain dislike was shown to the addition of a 
German-speaking Canton. It was believed at the time that the French 
Government would have opposed the plan had it ever been formally 
presented to the Paris Conference. 



chap, xxvm AVERSION TO BUREAUCRACY 365 

powerful neighbours is that of watchfulness tinged by sus- 
picion. The Assembly has thought itself forced, by the pro- 
tective tariffs of neighbour States and by the fear of being 
swamped by German competition in manufactures, to im- 
pose a tariff for the defence of what are taken to be the 
economic interests of Switzerland, which holds in this re- 
spect a position towards Germany resembling that which 
Canada holds towards the United States. 

The actual merits and defects, or what may be called the 
everyday quality of the administration of a country, cannot 
be judged by a stranger, who is obliged to gather as best he 
may the sentiments of the inhabitants, and to gauge from 
their complaints the amount of dissatisfaction that exists. 
The Swiss, like the Germans, are not querulous, and their 
administration is so completely popular, so absolutely their 
own creation, reflecting their own qualities, that to blame it 
would be to blame themselves. Anyhow, as they do complain 
less than either Englishmen or Americans or Frenchmen, 
though equally free to speak their mind, one must conclude 
that they are well satisfied, not only with the purity of their 
Civil Service, which is unquestionable, but with its com- 
petence and its diligence. 1 This is the more noteworthy be- 
cause they are, especially in the German cantons, not defer- 
ential to officials. The right of the individual to personal 
freedom and immunity from interference by the State is not 
so fully safeguarded by law as in England or America, 
though this blemish is less conspicuous in Switzerland than 
in other parts of continental Europe where the Roman law 
had more power. The Switzer is less " governed " or " regu- 
lated " than his neighbours in France and Germany. He 
holds himself more erect in the presence of authority. In- 
deed the word " bureaucracy " (Beamtenthum) and " cen- 
tralization " rouse such antagonism that whoever proposes to 
extend the functions of government must at the same time 
protest that he hates the bureaucrat and desires that whatever 
has to be done should be done locally and not from the cap- 
ital, and as far as possible by the people themselves. The 
Swiss set no great store upon the technical training of offi- 

iHere again I speak of things as they were before 1914, for censures 
were passed on the handling of some of the matters dealt with during 
the war. 



366 SWITZERLAND PA rt n 

cials, and their public service stands on a lower level of skill 
than does the Prussian, and draws into its ranks less of the 
talent of the country. Regarded as a career, it is unattrac- 
tive; regarded as a hierarchy, it is not perfectly organized 
and disciplined. But it is in touch with the common man, 
and in no wise a caste, while at the same time it suffers less 
from the influences of political party than does the civil 
service in the United States or in France. 

Government and Administration in General 

Two merits strike all foreign observers. One is the cheap- 
ness of the administration. Finances have been carefully 
managed both in the cantons and (except during the recent 
war) in the Confederation, current administrative expenses 
being kept down. The Confederation grew richer with the 
growth of the country, and the rise in indirect taxation was 
filling its treasury when the expenditure needed for the force 
that was to defend the country's neutrality piled up a heavy 
debt. Economy must now again be its first care, and may be 
expected, for the people are not only thrifty, but inquisitive, 
applying to public expenditure a rigorous standard such as 
that which regulates a peasant household. 

Purity, the other conspicuous feature, if partly due to the 
absence of those temptations which richer countries some- 
times present, is none the less creditable. 1 The Cantonal 
governments, like the Federal, are practically free from cor- 
ruption, for scandals, though they occur as in all countries, 
are rare; and when they occur, the guilty person, however 
strong his position had been, must quit public life forthwith. 
In the United States, or in Canada, such a culprit might have 
held his place, or recovered it after a few years. It may be 
thought that in the small communities of Switzerland virtue 
is easier because detection is more certain. But there have 
been small communities elsewhere, in Spanish and here and 
there in British and French colonies also, in which venality 
almost ceased to be disgraceful. 

Lest the shadows that fall upon parts of the landscape 

i Aristotle, agreeing with the Hebrew sage who prayed he might 
have neither poverty nor riches, would have applauded in Switzerland 
an approximation to his model democracy in which power rested with 
citizens of moderate means. 



chap, xxvm DEFECTS COMPLAINED OF 367 

should seem to have been forgotten, it is proper to enumerate, 
before closing this sketch of the legislative and executive 
machinery, some of the faults which the Swiss themselves 
find in it. I give those which I have heard from men en- 
titled to speak, without venturing to estimate the extent to 
which the alleged blemishes exist, and the harm they do. 
Some are not serious. But the duty of an enquirer, espe- 
cially when he prosecutes his enquiries among a rather 
taciturn people, is to ask for the worst that can be said 
against the existing system. 

1. The plan of granting subventions from the national 
treasury to the cantons is alleged to be wasteful, injurious 
to the cantons in impairing self-helpfulness, and liable to be 
perverted for political purposes. The dominant party can, 
it is said, strengthen itself by these gifts, and bring a small 
canton too much under Federal influence. Against this it 
is argued that the power of withholding a subvention is an 
engine for securing the enforcement of Federal law by a can- 
ton disposed to be insubordinate. No great mischief has re- 
sulted so far, but the practice has its risks. Local subsidies 
have been lavishly bestowed, and misused for political ends, 
in the United States and in Canada. 

2. Through recent extensions of the sphere of government, 
as well as through the growth of the country, the Federal 
Council has been loaded with more work than it can over- 
take and has little time for studying large questions of policy. 
There are but seven Ministers, each with a small staff. A 
well-paid and highly competent official, resembling the perma- 
nent Under Secretary of the great English departments, is 
badly needed. But the people are slow to move. They re- 
jected in 1898 a law providing pensions for Federal em- 
ployees. The peasants, when they come to Bern, shake their 
heads over the handsome flight of steps which leads up to the 
legislative chambers. So the Assembly has hesitated to 
spend more money on the hard-worked administration. 
Economy, rare in democracies, is characteristic of a country 
where the vast majority of the citizens not only pay taxes, 
but know and feel that they pay. 

3. The Federal Council is alleged to have been influenced 
in the exercise of its patronage by party considerations, ap- 
pointing, or promoting, persons who are recommended by 



368 SWITZEKLAND P a*t n 

members of the Assembly as having served the dominant 
party, and the steady increase in the number of administra- 
tive boards steadily increases its patronage. Such cases 
doubtless occur in the case of small offices, but seldom with 
regard to important posts, such as those in diplomacy, in the 
higher ranks of the home service, or in the professors of the 
famous Polytechnikum at Zurich. Occasional abuses of 
patronage must be expected in every country, unless it selects 
officials by competitive examination, and that method is not 
easily applied to promotions in the higher ranks. The evil 
is not frequent enough in Switzerland to lower the tone and 
efficiency of the public service generally. • More serious was 
the complaint that the army suffered from having too many 
officers who owed their position to their local influence or 
political affiliations rather than to military aptitude. This 
defect, for which the Cantonal authorities, who appoint the 
lower officers, were largely responsible is believed to have 
been cured by the legislation of 1907. The management of 
the army is however still criticized, some holding that it is 
too costly, others that it does not secure thoroughly skilled 
officers. 

4. When, as often happens, the Federal Government ap- 
points a Commission, perhaps consisting of members of the 
Assembly, to investigate and report upon some pending mat- 
ter, such as a question of undertaking, or estimating the cost 
of, some public work, those who conduct the enquiry are some- 
times accused of needlessly protracting the sittings in order 
to increase the compensation they receive for their trouble, 
which is fixed at thirty francs per diem, plus travelling 
expenses. 

5. Another charge, which affects not the Federal but the 
Cantonal and Communal Governments, is of wider scope. 
There is said to be much petty jobbery and demagogism in 
the towns, especially the smaller towns, and in some rural 
areas. Sometimes by their talent for intrigue, sometimes by 
plausible speech, men with more ambition than merit push 
themselves to the front, become wire-pullers in local elections, 
get small contracts for their friends, and perhaps end by 
securing a local post for themselves, 1 for even a pittance 

i A not too friendly picture of political party arts, as practised in 
a city of French-speaking Switzerland, may be found in the novel 



chap, xxvni MINOK LOCAL ABUSES 369 

means something to the class of men, usually tradesfolk or the 
humbler kind of lawyers, who practise these arts. One finds 
a concurrence of testimony upon this point ; nor is this sur- 
prising, for such things must be expected in any community 
(not composed of angels) where offices, too poorly remuner- 
ated to attract able men, are bestowed either by popular elec- 
tion or by Boards each of whose members is practically 
irresponsible. 

Such place-hunting would exist even if there were no par- 
ties. It tends, however, to become involved with party ac- 
tion. Every party needs men, especially young men, who will 
undertake troublesome unpaid work, such as that of organiz- 
ing meetings, looking after elections, propagating party doc- 
trines. Though there is less of such work in Switzerland 
than in most democracies, some there must be, and it is nat- 
ural for those who render such service to expect a reward 
in the shape of an office, natural that men of ambition, but 
no strong convictions, should join a party which has some- 
thing to give, natural also for those who have been closely 
associated in political agitation to think first of their ac- 
quaintances when they have a post to bestow. This tend- 
ency to work politics for the sake of offices goes, in some 
places, hand in hand with the efforts of the Freemasons to 
advance their friends. Here, as in other parts of the Eu- 
ropean continent, this order is associated with radicalism. 
It is supposed to be strong in Switzerland, but all secret so- 
cieties are, like the Jesuits, apt to be credited with more 
power than they possess. The proneness to push one's 
friends and reward adherents by office, though most often 
charged on the Swiss Radicals because they have had more 
opportunities, is nowhere stronger than in the Ultramontane 
canton of Fribourg. 

The extent of this evil is differently estimated in Switzer- 
land itself by different observers, who here as elsewhere can 
go on disagreeing, since the materials for a fair and exact 
judgment are unattainable. A stranger is led to believe 
that the malady, perhaps most evident in days when there 

called L'Echelle, by M. J. P. Porret. There may be, but I have not 
found, a similar picture of cantonal politics in Zurich or Basle. M. 
Porret's description may be compared with the graphic and humorous 
treatment of New Hampshire (U. S. A.) politics in the Comston, and 
Mr. Crewe's Career of Mr. Winston Churchill. 

VOL,. I 2 B 



370 SWITZERLAND PA bt n 

are no great issues bringing the best citizens to the front, is 
more widespread here than in England (a few boroughs ex- 
cepted), or in Holland, or in Norway, or in the Australasian 
British colonies, but less common than in France, and far 
less common than it has been in the United States. Hap- 
pily for themselves, the Swiss never contracted the Amer- 
ican habit of turning out employees to make room for others 
who have " claims on the party." 



CHAPTER XXIX 

DIRECT LEGISLATION BY THE PEOPLE: REFERENDUM AND 

INITIATIVE 

So far we have been studying those parts of the Swiss 
system which it has in common with other constitutional 
countries, viz. representative assemblies and an executive re- 
sponsible thereto or to the people. Now, however, we come 
to an institution almost peculiar to Switzerland, one which 
deserves full examination, because it has profoundly modi- 
fied Swiss government and has begun to influence opinion 
throughout the world. This is the method of Direct Popu- 
lar Legislation, i.e. law-making by the citizens themselves 
and not through their representatives. Nothing in Swiss ar- 
rangements is more instructive to the student of democracy, 
for it opens a window into the soul of the multitude. Their 
thoughts and feelings are seen directly, not refracted through 
the medium of elected bodies. 

Wherever in the early world we find a people governing 
itself, its power seems to have found its expression in the 
direct action of a primary assembly of the whole community, 
whether as tribe or as city. 1 Of the primitive Germans 
Tacitus says, " De minoribus principes consultant, de maiori- 
bus omnes." Such an assembly has, as already observed 
(see p. 337), maintained itself in some Cantons of Switzer- 
land, and has parallels in other parts of the world, even 
among the Kafirs of South Africa. 2 In the Middle Ages 
these primitive gatherings died out, as large nations were 
formed out of small communities, so constitutional freedom, 
when evolved out of the feudal polity, passed into the form 
of representative assemblies. Only the Swiss Landesge- 
meinde kept up the ancient tradition and practice, and made 

1 In some Slavonic countries something similar seems to have existed, 
but apparently not among the Celtic peoples. 

2 A description of the Pitso (a primary assembly) among the Basu- 
tos may be found in the author's Impressions of South Africa, chap. xx. 

371 



372 SWITZERLAND pabt n 

the idea of direct action by the people familiar. Even the 
oligarchical governments of cities like Bern and Ziirich oc- 
casionally referred questions of exceptional gravity to the 
communities over which they ruled, inviting their opinion, 1 
and in Geneva (not till last century a member of the Con- 
federation) the whole people exercised their right of enacting 
laws in the Conseil General. 2 Rousseau, who argued that no 
government was truly popular unless the people acted di- 
rectly and not through delegates, was doubtless influenced 
by the recollections of his own city as well as by what he had 
heard of the Landesgemeinde in the old Forest Cantons. He 
must, as a child, have accompanied his father to a meeting 
of the General Assembly of the Genevese in which the citizens 
voted on the laws submitted by their legislative authorities. 
The Swiss practice was seldom referred to by the constitu- 
tion-makers of France from 1789 onwards. But it had im- 
pressed Napoleon. 3 In his treatment of the country he came 
as near to allowing himself to be influenced by sentiment as 
in any other part of his career, and he established in 1803 a 
Constitution for the whole country, then for the first time 
officially described as Switzerland, which lasted till his fall. 
When the flood of change induced by the French Revolu- 
tion had passed, and the Landesgemeinde were re-established 
in the mountain valleys which had known them from old 
time, their example, coupled with the new theories of popular 
rights which France had diffused, and perhaps also with the 
example of the American States, began to tell upon the minds 
of the larger cantons. In the period of change which lasted 
from 1830 to 1848, the new constitutions which the cantons 
adopted were submitted to the people and enacted by their 
votes, as a Federal Constitution had been submitted- but re- 
jected in 1802. Again, in 1848 it was the peoples of the 

i As to these Volksanfragen, see an instructive discourse ( published 
as a pamphlet) by M. Horace Micheli (of Geneva) entitled La Sou- 
verainete populaire. 

2 See an interesting pamphlet of M. G. Wagniere, La Democratic en 
Suisse, p. 15. Throughout the eighteenth century a struggle went on 
in Geneva between the oligarchic government and the popular party 
which was endeavouring to assert, or recover, the rights of the mass 
of citizens. An interesting view of its latest phase may be found in 
Mr. D. W. Freshfield's Life of Saussure. 

• I quote (in note at the end of this chapter) from M. Wagniere a 
passage from the First Consul's address to the Swiss delegates who 
came to Paris in 1801. 



chap, xxix LEGISLATION BY THE PEOPLE 373 

cantons that accepted the new Federal Constitution. The 
direct action of the people having thus become familiar, the 
practice extended itself from constitutions to other enact- 
ments. As early as 1831 St. Gallen adopted a scheme by 
which communes could vote to reject a law passed by the As- 
sembly of the canton ; and this so-called " veto " in one form 
or another was adopted by other cantons, till at last a sys- 
tem developed itself under which the people obtained in every 
canton but one (Fribourg) the right of accepting or refus- 
ing a law submitted to it by the Legislature. This is the so- 
called Referendum, a name drawn from the usage in the old 
Confederation by which the delegates to the Diet from a can- 
ton were entitled to withhold its assent to a resolution of that 
body till they had referred it to their own canton for assent 
or rejection. 1 

Concurrently with the process by which the people as- 
serted their final voice in legislation, there appeared another 
by which they secured the power of themselves proposing 
legislation over the head and without the consent of the rep- 
resentative Assembly. In 1845 Vaud inserted in its Consti- 
tution a provision giving 8000 electors the right to require 
that the Cantonal Council should submit to popular vote any 
question of enacting or repealing a law, and other cantons 
followed by degrees. When the Federal Constitution was, 
after long and vehement controversy, revised in 1874, power 
was given to 30,000 voters to require that a Bill passed by 
the Legislature should be submitted to the people. This cre- 
ated the Federal Referendum. The possession by the people, 
since 1848, of the right to demand, by a petition signed by 
50,000 voters, that the Constitution should be amended, sug- 
gested a new clause, enacted in 1891 and now in force, en- 
abling that number of citizens to put forward a specific 
amendment to be submitted to the vote of the people. This 
is the so-called Popular Constitutional Initiative. These two 
institutions, Referendum and Initiative, represent an effort 
to return from the modern method of legislation by repre- 
sentative assemblies to the ancient method of legislation by 
the citizens themselves. In the Hellenic world the area of 

1 See as to the history of Swiss popular legislation, the valuable 
book of Th. Curti, Le Referendum, Paris, 1905, a translation, with 
additions, from the German original. 



374 SWITZERLAND PA rt ii 

each republic was so small that the citizens could meet for 
debate, as they now do in the small Landesgemeinde cantons. 
Such oral debate being impossible in the Confederation and 
the larger cantons, the citizen can in these exercise his rights 
only by delivering his note on paper. 

Premising that there are also cantons in which communes, 
too large to determine issues by a popular vote in the com- 
munal meeting, send these issues to be voted on at a poll of 
the commune, and also some large cities in which municipal 
matters are similarly submitted to a popular vote of all the 
citizens, we may proceed to the more important and more 
instructive procedure employed for popular voting in the 
Confederation and in the Cantons, examining, first, the ar- 
rangements governing the employment of the popular vote 
by Eeferendum and Initiative in the Confederation and the 
Cantons; secondly, the figures recording the use made of it; 
thirdly, the actual working of the system; and lastly, the 
arguments used to recommend or disparage it, winding up 
with the conclusions regarding it at which Swiss opinion has 
arrived. It will then be possible to judge how far the ex- 
ample Switzerland sets is fit to be followed in other countries. 

The arrangements now in force, complicated at first sight, 
become easier to follow when we consider separately A the 
Referendum and B the Initiative, and when in considering 
each of these we distinguish the application of each (a) to 
the Confederation and (b) to the cantons respectively, and 
also in both Confederation and Cantons (1) to Constitutions 
and (2) to laws respectively. 

A. The Referendum 

(a) In the Confederation the Eeferendum (i.e. the sub- 
mission to popular vote, for approval or rejection, of a meas- 
ure passed by the legislature) exists: 

1. For all changes whatever in the Federal Constitution. 
This approval must be given not only by a numerical ma- 
jority of the citizens voting, but also by a majority of the 
cantons. 

2. For all Federal Laws (i.e. statutes), and for all Reso- 
lutions (Beschliisse, arretes) (being of general application 
and not having been declared by the Legislature to be 



chap, xxix THE REFERENDUM 375 

" urgent "), whenever a demand for such submission to popu- 
lar vote is made by either at least 30,000 citizens or by at 
least eight cantons. 

(b) In the Cantons the Referendum exists: 

1. For all changes in the Cantonal Constitution. 1 

2. As respects laws and resolutions passed by the Cantonal 
Legislature, 

In eight cantons for all laws and resolutions. (This is 

called the Obligatory Referendum.) 
In seven cantons where a prescribed number of citizens 
of the canton (the number varying from canton to 
canton) demand its application. (This is called the 
Optional or Facultative Referendum.) 
In three cantons there is a distinction drawn between 
different classes of laws, the Referendum being Obli- 
gatory for some and Optional for others. 
In one canton (Fribourg) there is no Referendum for 
laws. 
In cantons, governed by a Primary Assembly of all cit- 
izens (Landesgemeinde), there is no need for a Referendum, 
since that Assembly legislates. 

It thus appears that the Confederation does not go so far 
as do the cantons, for it submits laws to popular vote only 
where 30,000 citizens (or eight cantons) ask for the submis- 
sion, whereas all cantons but seven require either all laws or 
all laws of a prescribed character to be so submitted. It is of 
course easier and cheaper to take a popular vote in a small 
community than over the whole Confederation. Only five 
cantons have more than 200,000 inhabitants, a number less 
than the population of some American congressional dis- 
tricts. 

What Resolutions are to be deemed " urgent " ? This is 
a question which has raised much discussion, and as it has 
been found impossible to frame a satisfactory definition, the 
matter has been left to be decided by the Federal Assembly 
in each case as it arises. Broadly speaking it is only enact- 
ments of a temporary character or framed for some particu- 
lar emergency that are deemed " urgent," 2 and so withheld 

1 The Federal Constitution prescribes (Art. VI.) that every Can- 
tonal Constitution must be accepted by the people. 

2 It is sometimes alleged that this power of the Assembly has, espe- 
cially in recent years, been unduly extended. By giving the title of 



376 SWITZERLAND pabt n 

from submission to the popular vote. Treaties have not so 
far been submitted (save in the very exceptional case of that 
by which Switzerland entered into the League of Nations con- 
stituted by the Treaty of Versailles of 1919), but the ques- 
tion whether they ought to be is to be presently determined 
by a popular vote. Neither is the annual budget submitted, 
nor decisions of a merely administrative character. 

B. The Initiative 

The Initiative {i.e. the right of a prescribed number of 
the citizens to propose the passing of an enactment by popu- 
lar vote) exists : 

(a) In the Confederation — 

For changes in the Constitution when a demand is made 
by at least 50,000 citizens. They may make it either by 
sending up to the Assembly a specific amendment, which the 
latter then forthwith submits to the people, or by demanding 
that the Assembly shall prepare an amendment embodying a 
certain principle which they lay before it. In this latter 
case the Assembly first submits to the people the question: 
Shall the Assembly prepare such an amendment as is desired ? 
If this is carried the Assembly prepares it, and a further 

Resolutions to enactments which are really Laws, and by declaring 
such Resolutions to be either " urgent " or " not of general applica- 
tion," it can withdraw from the operation of the Referendum matters 
not really urgent. Whereas between 1874 and 1913 the citizens used 
the right of demanding a Referendum 31 times on a total of 284 Laws 
and Resolutions passed by the Assembly, they used it only 3 times 
on 62 Laws and Resolutions passed between 1905 and 1919. This 
decline from a percentage of 11 per cent to 5 per cent may suggest that 
the citizens found less occasion for the exercise of their right, but it 
may also be due to the large use of the power of " declaring urgency/ 1 
a power liable to be employed when the Assembly feared rejection by 
the people. Of 1150 enactments passed by the Assembly between 1874 
and 1919, upon only about 350 could the Referendum have been de- 
manded. In a debate (in 1919) in the Assembly a member observed 
" On raconte qu'un homme d'eglise qui voulait manger un poulet un 
jour de careme dit a son poulet ' Je te baptise carpe,' et sa conscience 
eitait tranquille. Le Conseil Federal et la Commission du Conseil 
National font un peu la meme chose pour leur poulet, pour ce projet. 
lis la baptisent ' arrete,' et leur conscience democratique est tranquille, 
parce que si e'est un arrets il n'y a pas besoin de le soumettre au 
Referendum." On this occasion the remonstrance prevailed, and the 
National Council changed the description of the enactment from 
" arrets " to " loi." 



chap, xxix THE INITIATIVE 377 

popular vote is then taken on the amendment so prepared and 
submitted. 

(b) In the Cantons — 

1. In all the cantons (except Geneva) 1 a prescribed num- 
ber of citizens (varying in the different cantons) may either 
demand a general revision of the Constitution, or propose 
some particular amendments to it. 2 

2. In all the cantons except three (Luzern, Fribourg, and 
Valais) a prescribed number of citizens may either propose 
a new law or resolution, or submit to the Cantonal Council 
the principle on which they desire a new law to be based, 
asking the Council to frame the law desired. In the latter 
case the Council puts to the people the question : Shall a new 
law such as is desired be prepared ? and if the people answer 
affirmatively, the Council prepares the law and it goes before 
the people to be decided on a second vote. If, on the other 
hand, the proposal as already drafted by its promoters goes 
straight to the people, the Council may oppose it, or may 
themselves draft an alternative new law on the same subject, 
to be voted on by the people along with the measure proposed 
by the demanding citizens. 

The broad result of these arrangements is that in the Con- 
federation, the wide area of which makes a frequent ref- 
erence to the people troublesome, popular voting in the two 
forms of Keferendum and Initiative is used for three pur- 
poses, viz. : 

(a) For changes in the Constitution proposed by the As- 
sembly. 

(/?) For changes in the Constitution proposed by 50,000 
citizens under the Initiative. 

(y) For ordinary laws where 30,000 citizens, or eight can- 
tons, make the demand under the Referendum. 

In the Cantons, since they are smaller, it is natural to 
find it used more freely, viz. : 

(a) For Constitutional amendments proposed by the Can- 
tonal Legislature to the people. 

1 Geneva has an automatic revision of her Constitution every fifteen 
years. 

2 The Federal Constitution also prescribes ( Art. VI. ) that in every 
canton the absolute majority of the citizens (i.e. a majority of the 
whole number of citizens) shall have the right of demanding a revi- 
sion of the Constitution. 



378 SWITZERLAND PA bt ii 

(/?) For Constitutional changes proposed by a prescribed 
number of citizens by way of Initiative. 

(y) In most cantons as respects Laws — (1) For all laws 
proposed by the Legislature (Referendum) ; (2) for laws 
proposed by a prescribed number of citizens (Initiative). 

Where a revision of the Constitution is proposed by the 
citizens, the Cantonal Council is entitled to submit its own 
amendments also, and if the popular vote decides that there 
is to be a general revision, the work of making it is performed 
either by the Council or by a body (resembling the American 
Constitutional Convention) created for the purpose. 

It will be observed that while the Confederation restricts 
the Initiative of citizens to changes in the Constitution, the 
cantons are less conservative and permit it to be used for 
changing the ordinary laws. There is, however, no recog- 
nized test for determining what is a constitutional change, 
i.e. for distinguishing constitutional amendments from ordi- 
nary laws. In this absence of a clear line between the two 
kinds of enactment the Initiative has been often used, both in 
the Confederation and in cantons, to pass under the guise of a 
constitutional amendment what is really an ordinary and 
not what lawyers or historians would deem a constitutional 
law. 1 

The procedure applied in the Confederation, as respects 
a Referendum on laws or resolutions, is the following. 
Every law when passed is published in the official journal 
and sent to the cantons to be circulated through the com- 
munes. Ninety days are allowed to pass before it can take 
effect. Within this period either eight cantons or 30,000 
citizens may demand its submission to the people. The 
method of demand by cantons being rarely used, the op- 
ponents of the Bill proceed to collect signatures. If it ex- 
cites little popular interest they must work hard to secure 
the requisite number, and organizations are sometimes 
formed for the purpose. Where the population is Roman 
Catholic, the clergy can give effective help; where it is 
Protestant, action by the pastors if they care to act (which 

i The same difficulty has arisen in those States of the American Union 
which have adopted the Popular Initiative. To-day, the only distinc- 
tion that can, both in Switzerland and these States, be drawn between 
a Law and a provision of the Constitution is that the latter can be 
repeated or amended only by a vote of the people. 



chap, xxix REFERENDUM PROCEDURE 379 

they seldom do) is less efficient, attendance at their churches 
being less regular. Sometimes, but by no means as a matter 
of course, party organizations take the matter up. Agents 
may even be sent out to collect signatures, and paid ten or 
twenty centimes per signature. 1 Where this happens, the 
signatures are not always above suspicion, and thousands of 
names have in some instances been struck off, either because 
written in the same hand or for want of the proper official 
attestation by the president of the commune to which the cit- 
izen belongs. The Federal Council has decided that illiter- 
ates can sign by a mark, but the right of signing, since it is 
a part of citizenship, depends on Cantonal law. When the 
number sent in has been recognized as sufficient by the Fed- 
eral Council, it informs the Cantonal Councils, publishes the 
law all over the country, and fixes a day for the voting, not 
less than four weeks after the publication and distribution of 
the law is sent to each voter, but no official explanatory memo- 
to the importance attached to the law and to the interest 
which the political parties, as parties, take in it. A copy of 
the law. Then an agitation begins, greater or less according 
randum accompanies it, the Federal Assembly having con- 
sidered that it would be hard to secure an impartail one. 2 
Meetings are held at which members of the legislature and 
others advocate or oppose it, and the press is full of articles 
on the subject. Nevertheless not every citizen is perfectly 
informed, for the debates in the Federal Assembly are so 
scantily reported that the arguments pro and con cannot be 
easily gathered from them. However anxious a man may 
be to discharge his civic duties, he may possess, especially 
if he lives in an isolated spot among the mountains, no 
adequate data for judgment on matters perhaps technical 
or otherwise difficult. This may be one of the reasons why 
the vote, when it comes, has been often disappointingly 
small. 

i Professor Hilty mentions that, having asked one of the inhabitants 
of a remote valley why all his village had signed the demand for a 
Referendum, he was informed that a native of the valley who came 
to collect signatures told the people that he was to get ten centimes — 
one penny, two cents — for every signature. Having no opinion of 
their own on the matter, their courteous generosity enriched him by 
a gift which cost them nothing. 

2 A Memorandum is, however, issued in Oregon, U.S.A., for the in- 
formation of the voters. 



380 SWITZERLAND part ii 

The arrangements for voting are in the hands of the can- 
tonal authorities, though the ballot-papers and the copies 
of the law are supplied by the Federal Government. The 
voting, which always takes place on the same day over the 
whole country, and on a Sunday, is quiet and orderly, nor are 
complaints heard of bribery or of fraudulent counts. As the 
law has to be printed in German, French, Italian, and Ro- 
mansch, and more than 600,000 copies are needed, the cost 
of taking the opinion of the people is considerable. 

The cantons employ a procedure generally similar to that 
described for the Confederation. In most of them also a 
discretion is left to the Council to exempt from the Referen- 
dum resolutions which are temporary in their operation, and 
some nominations to office and resolutions of an administra- 
tive nature are also exempted. Appropriations of money 
beyond a certain sum (even if not of permanent operation) 
are in some cantons required to be submitted. In nine and 
a half cantons where the Referendum applies to all laws, 
there is of course no preliminary stage of collecting signa- 
tures. So soon as the law or decree (not being of an urgent 
nature) has been passed, or (in some cantons) at the end of 
the legislative session, notice is given of the day on which 
the popular vote is to be taken, and a copy of the law is 
(usually) sent to each citizen. In these cantons a sort of 
message or document explaining each law is prepared by the 
Cantonal Executive Council and delivered to each citizen with 
his copy of the law. Such messages are usually recom- 
mendations of the measure, but it seems that in one canton 
(Thurgau), where the Executive Council, being directly 
chosen by the people, is independent of the Great or Legis- 
lative Council, the former body has been known to criticize 
the law adversely. 1 Before a Cantonal, as before a Federal, 
voting there is plenty of public discussion, followed by the 
people with great interest, at least in the towns and in the 
more educated of the rural districts. The press, too, is alert. 
It is often accused of misrepresenting the issue; but news- 
paper misrepresentations, dangerous in the sphere of foreign 
relations, are less harmful in domestic affairs, where the 

i Deploige, Referendum in Switzerland, p. 181 of English transla- 
tion. 



chap, xxix REFERENDUM IN CANTONS 381 

topic is more familiar and corrections can be promptly made. 
No European country has so many journals in proportion to 
its size as Switzerland, and no shade of opinion lacks its 
organ. Some cantons direct that public meetings for de- 
bating the law shall be held before the voting. In some, ab- 
stention from voting is punished by a small fine. 

Where, as in seven and a half cantons, the Keferendum is 
Optional, i.e. is taken at the demand of a prescribed number 
of citizens, the Cantonal Council may itself, without wait- 
ing for a demand, decide to take the opinion of the people on 
some particular measure which it has passed, and in some 
cantons a prescribed minority of the Council may require the 
measure to be so submitted. In SchafThausen an official 
memorandum explaining the law is circulated to the people. 
In Fribourg the authorities of the Roman Catholic Church, 
powerful there, show no desire to introduce it. 

In cantons where every law must be submitted to the peo- 
ple, an active legislature may lay a heavy burden upon the 
citizen. Most cantons fix one or two occasions in the year 
for taking a popular vote on the batch of laws passed at the 
last preceding sittings of the Council. Zurich has a regular 
spring and a regular autumn voting, but frequently adds a 
third, so its citizens are kept pretty busy. In Zurich, more- 
over, and also in Aargau, a law may (when the Cantonal 
Council so directs) be voted on in sections, so that the people 
can reject one part and adopt the rest, a useful provision in 
an intelligent and painstaking people. One canton (Basel 
Land) used to require for the acceptance of a law an abso- 
lute majority of the qualified citizens, but this requirement 
has been abandoned, since it often caused the loss of a meas- 
ure, because a sufficient number of citizens had not come to 
the polls. 

The procedure followed in the cantons where a law comes 
before the people by way of Initiative resembles (mutatis 
mutandis) that applicable to the Referendum where de- 
manded by a prescribed number of voters. Copies of the 
proposed law are distributed to every citizen before the day 
of voting arrives, and in some cantons the arguments ad- 
vanced by the proposers are also circulated at the public ex- 
pense. The Cantonal Council can express its opinion on the 



382 SWITZERLAND pabt n 

project or put forward an alternative plan. The law, if and 
when passed, may like any other cantonal law be declared 
invalid by the Federal Legislature if they conceive it to trans- 
gress the Federal Constitution. 

Some other features of the cantonal Initiative systems de- 
serve to be mentioned. 

Proposals for changes in the Constitution and those which 
submit ordinary laws may be differently treated. In the 
former case the work of revision is sometimes entrusted to 
a special body chosen for the purpose (resembling the Amer- 
ican Constitutional Convention), 1 but more frequently the 
Cantonal Council undertakes it after its next re-election, and 
where the people have to vote, first whether there is to be a 
revision, and thereafter upon changes proposed, a prescribed 
interval must elapse between the two votings. 

In Bern, when the suggestion for a revision comes from 
the Cantonal Council, a two-thirds majority in that body is 
required. 

Some cantons permit the Council to advise the people 
against a general revision demanded by Initiative as well as 
to express its opinion upon particular changes proposed. 

Since no sharp distinction is drawn in the cantons any 
more than (as already observed) in the Confederation be- 
tween matters fit to be placed in a Constitution and those 
which belong to ordinary legislation, a Constitution may be 
loaded with provisions which do not affect the general frame 
of government and cannot be deemed Fundamental. This 
is inconvenient as well as illogical, but it has been found 
practically impossible (as in the States of the American 
Union) to define what properly belongs to a Constitution. 
In cantons where the people can initiate changes in the laws 
as well as in the Constitution there is less temptation than 
in the Confederation to propose what is really an ordinary 
Law in the form of a Constitutional amendment. It may be 
useful to give a few figures showing how these arrangements 
have worked. 

In the Confederation the popular votings between 1874, 
when the Referendum was introduced, and 1898 have been 
as follows : — 

i Swiss opinion does not generally approve the plan of a Special 
Convention, and it is not employed in the Confederation. 



chap, xxix WORKING OF KEFEREKDUM 383 

A. Votings on Constitutional Amendments, 10. Of these 
amendments, 7 were accepted and 4 rejected. 

B. Votings on Laws and Resolutions passed by the Legis- 
lature, 25. Of these enactments, 7 were accepted and 18 
rejected. 

A. Between 1905 and 1919 the figures were: — 

Votings on Laws and Resolutions passed by the Legisla- 
ture, 3. Of these, all were accepted. 

In all these cases the vote taken by cantons agreed with 
the decision of the popular vote. 

The signatures demanding a Referendum ranged from 
35,000 to 88,000 (in 1907). 

It is convenient to give here the figures relating to consti- 
tutional amendments also, in order to compare the results 
when the Legislature proposes and when the citizens propose. 

Proposals made since 1874 by the Legislature, 25. Of 
these 19 were accepted and 6 rejected. 

Proposals made by 50,000 citizens, 12. Of these 5 were 
accepted and 7 rejected. 1 

The number of votes cast in both forms of popular voting 
naturally varies with the amount of interest evoked by the 
particular measure submitted. It has fallen so low as 30 
per cent of the total number of qualified citizens, and has 
risen as high as 74. The average seems to be about 55 per 
cent. The number of signatures obtained for a demand for 
the submission of a law seems to be no index to the vote 
which will be ultimately cast against it. The largest num- 
ber of signatures for a constitutional amendment was 167,- 
000 (in 1908) in support of an Initiative for prohibiting 
the sale of absinthe. The proposal was carried by 241,000 
against 138,000. 

From these figures two things may be gathered. 

One is that the power of demanding the submission to 
the people of a law passed by the Legislature is not abused. 
Within the forty-four years from 1874 to 1919 less than 
one law in the year was so submitted; and in the last fif- 
teen the popular vote, only thrice demanded, affirmed each 

i Two were withdrawn, and at the beginning of 1920 three Initiative 
proposals were pending on which the people had not yet voted (one 
of these has since been carried ) , and the question proposed by the 
Assembly of accepting the decision of the Assembly that Switzerland 
should enter the League of Nations had not yet been voted upon. 



384 SWITZERLAND pabt n 

law. The cases in which attempts were made to obtain 
submission but the requisite number of signatures could 
not be collected, were not numerous. 

The other is that the proportion of rejections to approvals 
between 1874 and 1898 shows that cases occur, even in this 
highly democratic government, in which the legislature 
does not duly represent popular sentiment. 1 This is of 
course no news to practical politicians. Even in Great 
Britain Bills are sometimes " jammed through " the House 
of Commons by a Minister, though everybody knows that 
the bulk of the nation dislikes them. I recall at least one 
case where even the majority that was supporting the Min- 
istry was reluctant to pass its Bill, though it obeyed. 2 

Some examples may show how the people use their power. 
As the Swiss put into their Federal Constitution matters 
better fitted to be dealt with by ordinary legislation, we may 
consider together the cases in which constitutional amend- 
ments have been voted on, as they must be in every instance, 
and those in which a Referendum has been demanded on a 
particular law. 

The people rejected twice a law making uniform the 
qualifications for the suffrage in Federal elections, with the 
result that this subject remains in the sphere of Cantonal 
regulation. This was due to a Cantonal sentiment averse 
to extension of Federal power. 

They rejected several laws relating to banks and to pat- 
ents which, not quite understanding the details, they thought 
faulty, and also a Federal resolution anent patents. This 
latter had been submitted along with a law on epidemic 
diseases, making vaccination, already compulsory in some 
cantons, compulsory over all Switzerland. The .proposal 
evoked strong protests and was rejected by a large majority, 
and the harmless Patents Resolution, discredited by its 
neighbour measure, shared that neighbour's fate. They 
rejected a proposal for enlarging the powers of the Federal 
Government in educational matters, partly because it was 
denounced as " bureaucratic " and anti-religious, but even 

1 In one case a Bill passed by the Assembly with only a single dis- 
sentient vote was rejected by a large majority on a Referendum. 

2 The majority was wiser than the Ministry, for the measure dam- 
aged the party at the next general election. 



chap, xxix REJECTIONS AND ASSENTS 385 

more because it might have led to a secularization of the 
schools. Both Roman Catholics and many of the more 
conservative Protestants were intensely hostile, while the 
zeal of the (possibly more numerous) party that favours 
purely secular instruction was not active enough to over- 
come this resistance. 

They rejected, by a large majority, a law providing pen- 
sions for Federal employees, the peasantry seeing no reason 
why these veterans of public service should have any better 
treatment than they had themselves. A reluctance to try 
experiments or enlarge Federal powers led them in 1891 
to reject the proposed purchase of the Central Railway of 
Switzerland, yet seven years later they accepted a scheme 
for buying up all the lines of the country. 

Other laws rejected had the following purposes: an in- 
crease in the expenditure upon the representation of Switzer- 
land abroad; the creation of a Federal monopoly of the sale 
of lucifer matches, especially with a view to the sake of 
prevention of disease among the workers; the establishment 
of a State bank; alterations in the administration of the 
army so as to bring it more under Federal control; amend- 
ments in the military criminal law; a guarantee upon the 
sale of cattle (requiring such guarantee to be in writing) ; 
the creation of a system of compulsory insurance against 
sickness and accidents. In this last case it was apparently 
not so much the principle as the details that excited criti- 
cism, while the various private insurance societies organized 
opposition, and there were suspicions lest the Federal Gov- 
ernment should use the scheme for party purposes. So 
1903 saw the defeat of an amendment altering the consti- 
tutional provisions regarding the Federal alcohol monopoly, 
and of a law directed against newspaper incitements to 
escape the obligation of military service. 

On the other hand, they accepted the following measures: 
A law making civil marriage compulsory and at the same 
time facilitating divorce. The former provision was so 
largely approved (though it provoked opposition among 
Eoman Catholics) that it is believed to have secured the 
acceptance of the latter provision, notwithstanding some 
Protestant as well as Catholic dislike to a relaxation of 

VOL. I 2 



386 SWITZERLAND part ii 

the divorce law. The number of divorces rapidly in- 
creased. 

A measure amending the factory laws and fixing eleven 
hours as the maximum day's labour. 

A general bankruptcy law for the Confederation. 

A Constitutional amendment empowering Federal legis- 
lation regarding insurance against sickness and accidents. 

A law granting a large subsidy to the Gothard railway, 
coupled with power to subsidize Alpine lines in Eastern and 
Western Switzerland. 

Two tariff laws, successively raising import duties. 

An amendment to the Constitution removing the prohi- 
bition to the cantons to impose the penalty of death which 
it had contained. 

An amendment (1885) to the Constitution giving the 
Federal Government a monopoly of the production of dis- 
tilled spirits, and a subsequent law (1887) framed in pur- 
suance of the power so conferred. 

A law for the regulation of railway accounts. 

Constitutional amendments extending the supervision of 
the Federal Government over forests, and empowering it 
to legislate regarding foodstuffs and other articles of prime 
necessity in the interests of public health (both by large 
majorities) . 

Constitutional amendments (1898) enabling the Federal 
Assembly to prepare a uniform code of civil and another 
of criminal law for the Confederation. These long steps 
towards centralization were accepted by majorities exceed- 
ing two-thirds of the citizens voting (264,933 against 101,- 
820, 266,713 against 101,712). 

A Constitutional amendment empowering the Federal 
Government to grant subventions to schools in the cantons. 

An amendment submitted by popular Initiative, and voted 
on in 1920, for the suppression of public gaming resorts. 

A measure for the purchase and working by the Federal 
Government of all the great railway lines. This bold new 
departure, though notably enlarging the sphere of Federal 
administration, was carried by 386,000 votes against 182,- 
000, the heaviest vote ever cast. 

This list has been made full in order to convey to the 
reader the kind of questions which come before the Swiss 



chap, xxix LEGISLATION BY THE PEOPLE 387 

people. Since in many instances the English or American 
reader has no means of judging whether or no the people 
erred, some remarks on the motives which seem to have in- 
fluenced their action in Confederation votings may be useful. 
The first question that rises to the mind will be as to 
the part played by political organizations in influencing 
the action of the people. In most democratic countries, 
and certainly in Britain, 1 it is hard to imagine a popular 
voting which would not be worked by the political parties. 
In Switzerland party sentiment seldom dominates the minds 
of the citizens. It is chiefly where a religious issue or a 
socialistic issue is involved that such sentiment tells, and 
then chiefly in Catholic districts. The Swiss voter, always 
independent, is most independent when he has to review 
the action of his Legislature. Still there are instances in 
which displeasure at the conduct of a party seemed to create 
a prejudice against measures it had put through the Assem- 
bly. In 1884 the Eeferendum was demanded on four laws 
passed shortly before, 2 none of which would probably have 
been required to run the gauntlet but for the irritation 
created in the minority parties by what was then deemed 
the rather high-handed behaviour of the ruling majority in 
the Assembly. All four bills were rejected, although two 
at least of them 3 were unquestionably, and one at least of 
the other two probably, beneficial. But the sequel was the 
oddest part of the affair. Immediately after these votings 
there occurred a general election, and the citizens returned 
to the Assembly a scarcely diminished majority of the same 
party which they had just censured by rejecting their bills. 
One would have expected the exact opposite, viz. that the 
innocent measures should be passed and the offending men 
dismissed. But the Swiss, who dislike changing their mem- 
bers, took their own way of expressing displeasure, and the 
majority profited by the warning. Cases occur in which the 

i Nevertheless in those States of the N. American Union which use 
the Eeferendum, democratic as they are, voting does not closely follow 
party lines. 

2 As to these four instances, called at the time "the four-humped 
camel," see Th. Curti, ut supra, p. 334, and Deploige, English transla- 
tion, p. 225. 

3 One of these two was a proposal to strengthen the staff of the Fed- 
eral Department of Justice, the other to increase by £400 the expendi- 
ture on the Legation at Washington. 



388 SWITZERLAND PAB t n 

party dominant in the Assembly having by some law or by 
some executive act offended a large section of the citizens, 
this section engineers the rejection of some law submitted 
to it rather as a rebuke or manifestation of its anger than 
because it dislikes the law itself. This furnishes a con- 
venient relief for the angry feeling, after the satisfaction of 
which things resume their normal course, and the people, 
having delivered their souls, can proceed on the next election 
to choose the same legislators whom they have just before 
rebuked. 

So sometimes a law is defeated, not because the bulk of 
the people condemn it, but because the favour of the larger 
number is so much fainter than the hostility of a smaller 
that the latter bring up not only all their own voters but a 
percentage of the indifferent, while the less zealous major- 
ity poll less than their proper strength. As often hap- 
pens, intensity wins against mere numbers. This is one of 
the ways in which minorities can make themselves into 
majorities. 

Though now and then a harmless measure suffers from 
being put to the vote simultaneously with one which rouses 
opposition still, broadly speaking, each proposal is dealt 
with on its merits. Distrust of the men who have proposed 
it does not necessarily disparage it; and as a party can- 
not count on getting its followers to support its measures 
at the polls, so neither does it suffer damage from their 
rejection. 

Independence, then, is the first quality of the citizen which 
the working of the system reveals. A second is Parsimony. 
Like the Scotch, the Swiss are not more avaricious than 
their neighbours, but they are more thrifty, and in public 
matters positively penurious. The Swiss peasant lives 
plainly and is extremely frugal. Averse to anything which 
can increase taxation — and all pay some direct tax — he 
does not understand why officials should be paid on a scale 
exceeding what he earns by his own toil. So laws involving 
an expenditure which would in England or France be thought 
insignificant in proportion to the results expected have been 
frequently thrown out by the votes of those who measure 
public needs by the depth of their own purses, and lack 



chap, xxix LEGISLATION BY THE PEOPLE 389 

the knowledge that would fit them to judge financial 
questions. 

A third tendency or motive is the dislike of officials and 
officialism. It has repeatedly led to the failure of bills 
for strengthening the administrative departments, and al- 
though such bills were sometimes needed, their failure 
checked for the moment the progress of what is called 
etatisme, i.e. State Socialism. 

A fourth is jealousy of the interference of the Central 
Government with the cantons. Several instances have been 
given above. Yet the instances of the railways and the 
adoption of codes of law for the Confederation show that it 
is not always operative. 

The quality we call good sense, the quality most important 
in a legislating nation as in a legislating assembly, is com- 
pounded of two things: judgment and coolheadedness, the 
absence of passion and the presence of intelligence. Now 
in the Swiss, a fighting people, but not (except the Italian 
Ticinese) a passionate people, long experience has formed 
the habit of voting in a calm spirit. They are an educated 
nation; nearly everybody not only can read but does read. 
They have solid rather than quick minds, and their best 
minds are more sagacious than imaginative. If few possess 
the knowledge needed to form an opinion on much of the 
legislation that comes before them, many have that con- 
sciousness of ignorance which is the beginning of wisdom. 
Hence their attitude towards a difficult or complicated meas- 
ure is guarded or suspicious. Omne ignotum pro pericu- 
loso. Unless they have such confidence in the Assembly 
that passed the law, or in the advisers who recommend it, 
as to supply what is wanting to their own judgment, they 
are disposed to reject rather than to approve. 

This is the explanation of what has been called the " con- 
servatism " of the Swiss. They are cautious, not easily 
caught by new schemes, little swayed by demagogues, pre- 
ferring, when something rouses their prejudice or eludes 
their comprehension, or points to dubious future develop- 
ments, to vote " No." As the average voter has a slower 
and less instructed mind than the average legislator, who 
is always more or less a picked man and trained to his work, 



390 SWITZERLAND PA rt ii 

new ideas take longer to penetrate the voter's head. Study 
or debate convinces the legislator that some reform is needed, 
and he passes a law to effect it. But when the law comes 
before the voter, his attachment to old custom, unenlight- 
ened by study though partially enlightened by discussion, 
prompts a negative. This happens chiefly in the rural and 
especially the mountain cantons, much less in a manufactur- 
ing population such as that of Zurich or Basle, in which 
legislation is more active. Thus an intricate law, or one 
covering more than one subject or introducing new prin- 
ciples, is apt to be rejected on the first voting, yet subse- 
quently accepted. 

Under these conditions some laws are delayed, and some 
lost. But it is far from true to say that the citizen " in 
the long-run votes ' No ' to every proposal." * He votes 
" No " sometimes because he dislikes the proposal on the 
merits, sometimes because he does not understand it, some- 
times because he does not see where it will lead him. But 
of mere blind aversion to change there is little evidence, as 
appears from the instances cited in which sweeping meas- 
ures have been adopted. 

But though dogged conservatism is not the note of the 
Swiss voter, he is frequently more short-sighted than his 
representative in the Assembly. Wider views of policy 
would have sanctioned compulsory vaccination, reforms in 
the military administration, proposals for the better sup- 
port of foreign legations and for pensions to Federal offi- 
cials. Here it was parsimony and the want of an imagina- 
tion that could realize conditions outside the voter's range 
that caused the mistakes. The former fault is so rare in 
democracies as to be almost a merit; the latter is inevitable 
when questions are addressed to a multitude of peasants 
and artisans who obey neither a party nor a leader. In 
Switzerland, however, no serious mischief has followed, for 
most of the laws rejected have been either afterwards adopted 
in a better form, or recognized to have been premature, 
because not sure to have behind them the popular sentiment 
which makes enforcement easy. 

The working of Popular Voting in the cantons can be but 
briefly treated, because the data have never been fully col- 
i Sir H. S. Maine, Popular Government, p. 97. 



chap, xxix LEGISLATION BY THE PEOPLE 391 

lected, even in Switzerland itself, and could be collected 
only by a long enquiry in the several cantons themselves. 
So far as can be gathered from the records of voting in a 
few of those larger cantons whose experience has been de- 
scribed by Swiss writers, the general conclusions to be drawn 
do not substantially differ from those which the Confedera- 
tion furnishes. Zurich, which I take as one of the most im- 
portant, has had an Obligatory Referendum since 1869; i.e. 
all laws passed by the Cantonal Council have to be submitted 
to the people, who, in the words of their Constitution, " exer- 
cise the legislative power with the assistance of the Can- 
tonal Council." Between 1869 and 1893 the people voted 
on 128 proposals submitted by the Council, whereof 99 were 
accepted and 29 rejected. Between 1893 and 1919 (in- 
clusive) there were votings on 126 laws and decrees and 12 
constitutional amendments submitted by the Council, and 
there were also votings on 15 proposals made by popular 
Initiative, 14 for laws, 1 for an amendment to the Consti- 
tution. The average percentage of voters is estimated at 
74, 1 but the use of proxies and the fact that in some com- 
munes abstention is punishable by fine makes Zurich ex- 
ceptional. When a Referendum vote coincides with an 
election to the Legislature, the average rises to 79. The 
highest percentage of votes cast to qualified voters I have 
found is 87 per cent in 1891, and the percentage seldom 
sinks below 60. Some measures aiming at useful objects 
have been rejected, as, for instance, laws for extending and 
improving education and the position of teachers, for limit- 
ing factory work to twelve hours a day and checking the 
employment of children, for establishing a system of com- 
pulsory insurance against sickness. The Council in these 
cases seems to have gone ahead of the general opinion. But 
when some of these proposals were subsequently submitted 
they were accepted, because better understood. Thus a law 
fixing ten hours as the maximum time for the labour of 
women in shops and certain domestic industries was carried 
by 45,000 votes against 12,000. Many other valuable 
measures have been similarly accepted, and according to 

1 When the Federal Constitution was submitted in 1874 the per- 
centage who voted in Canton Zurich was 93.7, which seems to make a 
" record " in popular votings. 






392 SWITZERLAND pabt n 

the Swiss writers who have treated the subject, possibly 
biassed in favour of their peculiar institutions, no per- 
manent harm has followed rejections; the reforms really 
needed are ultimately carried, and usually in a better shape 
than they at first wore. 

Anxious to disprove the charge of undue conservatism, 
the writers just referred to point to the fact that Zurich 
enacted a progressive income-tax which bears heavily on the 
rich. Such a measure, which would in some countries be 
cited to support a very different charge, was enacted in 
Vaud as a Constitutional amendment proceeding from the 
Legislature. It deserves to be remarked that although the 
people of Zurich are sometimes penny-wise in their dislike 
of expenditure, they have renounced the function of fixing 
the salaries of officials, vesting it in the Cantonal Council, 
and that they approved a proposal to spend three million 
francs on University and other new educational buildings 
in the city and canton. As an eminent and fair-minded 
citizen observed to me : " Kef orm would no doubt have 
moved faster without the Referendum. Yet the people are 
less stupid than we thought, when it was introduced, that 
they would show themselves. They reject some good laws, 
but fewer than we expected. Even prejudice and parsi- 
mony do not prevail against proposals whose utility can be 
made clear." 

The general results of the use of the popular vote in the 
cantons, taken all together, show that the Referendum is 
used temperately in those cantons where it is compulsory. 

Where it is optional, the demands for it are not numer- 
ous, and are particularly few in the French-speaking can- 
tons, Vaud, Neuchatel, and Geneva. 1 This fact seems to 
show either that there is no disposition to use the right of 
demand in a factious and vexatious spirit, or else that the 
legislatures of these cantons are in such full accord with the 
general sentiment that there is no occasion for an appeal 
to the people. It may also imply that the cantons which 
submit all laws do so rather in conformity to democratic 
theory than because there is any greater disposition in them 
than in others to distrust the legislature. 

i In the thirty years ending with 1912, even Geneva used the Refer- 
endum only ten times and the Initiative only seven. 



chap, xxix LEGISLATION BY THE PEOPLE 393 

The proportion of voters who go to the poll is rather 
smaller than in the Confederation, especially in cantons 
where all laws are submitted. In Bern it has been as low 
as 30 per cent, and in Basel Land and Solothurn the aver- 
age does not exceed 50 per cent. Keligious issues call out 
the largest vote; laws involving increased expenditure, espe- 
cially in the form of increased salaries, are those most fre- 
quently rejected. 

The system of Direct Legislation excites so much interest 
in other countries, and has been so often recommended as 
an improvement on the parliamentary frame of government, 
that it is worth while, even at the risk of some little repeti- 
tion, to enumerate and examine the arguments for and 
against it which Swiss experience has suggested. Its adop- 
tion and wide extension may be traced to two sources. 

One is the theoretic doctrine of the Sovereignty of the 
whole People, which, as a theory, is of French rather than 
Swiss origin, 1 and found its first concrete application in 
Europe in the submission to the whole French nation in 
1793 of the Constitution of that year, a Constitution never 
in fact brought into force. This suggested the similar con- 
sultation of the Swiss people in 1802. 

The other source is the practice of the small Alpine com- 
munities. As the whole people had voted their laws in pri- 
mary assemblies, it seemed conformable to ancient usage 
that when the number of citizens grew too large to be 
reached by one voice, they should be allowed to express 
their individual wills by voting at the spot wherein they 
dwelt. Men felt the independent personality of the citizen 
to be thus recognized in the wider, as well as in the narrower, 
compass. The law is his law, because he has taken a direct 
part in enacting it. As the direct control of the people 
has worked well in the sphere of local government it 
ought to prove equally sound in the canton and in the 
Confederation. 

A third ground for introducing the system, strongly 

pressed in the United States, was little dwelt upon in 

i Rousseau held that every law ought to be enacted by the citizens, 
but seems to have had in mind small communities, rather than a large 
nation. The doctrine that the People are the ultimate fountain of 
power descends from the ancient world, and was taken from the Ro- 
man law by St. Thomas Aquinas and other mediaeval writers. 



394 SWITZERLAND PA bt ii 

Switzerland, viz. dissatisfaction with representative bodies 
as failing to embody and express the popular will. Few 
complaints were made that the Swiss Legislatures were per- 
verting that will, and no one charged them with corruption 
or other sinister motives; but it was urged that the citizen 
knows better than his representatives what is for his own 
benefit, and that a law cannot but carry fuller moral au- 
thority and command more unquestioning obedience if it 
comes straight from the ultimate fountain of power. Here, 
it was said, is a proper counterpoise to that extension of the 
sphere of the Central Government which gives rise to dis- 
quiet, here is a safeguard against the influence which rail- 
way companies and other great commercial or financial in- 
terests may exert over the Federal Legislature. 

To these arguments, which prevailed in 1874, others, 
drawn from the experience of the years that have passed 
since, have been added. 

The frequent rejection by the people of measures passed 
by the Assembly shows that the latter does not always know 
or give effect to what has proved to be the real will of the 
people. 

While the Assembly has not suffered in public respect, 
it has been led to take more pains to consult public senti- 
ment, to anticipate objections, to put bills into the shape 
most brief, simple, and comprehensible by the average citi- 
zen. The citizen is supposed to know the law. Give him 
the best chance of knowing it. 

A further benefit is secured for the people. Their pa- 
triotism and their sense of responsibility are stimulated, 
for they feel themselves more fully associated with the work 
of legislation, formerly left to a class which professed to 
stand above them, and they are the more disposed to support 
the law they have shared in making. 

As the political education of the masses is thus promoted, 
so also that class in whose hands the conduct of government 
has mostly rested is brought into closer contact with the 
masses and can do more to familiarize the latter with po- 
litical questions. 

The influence of party is reduced, for a measure is con- 
sidered by the people on its merits, apart from the leaders 
who have proposed it or the party in the Assembly that has 



chap, xxix LEGISLATION BY THE PEOPLE 395 

carried it. Its approval by the people does not imply a 
strengthening, nor its rejection a weakening, of general 
legislative policy. Neither the Federal Council nor the 
Assembly is shaken because a Bill fails to become law. 

Though some measures bear a party stamp and rouse party 
resistance, though displeasure at the action of a party may 
discredit the laws it has passed and lead to their rejection, 
though those who are accustomed to vote for candidates 
belonging to one party in the Assembly are predisposed to 
vote for the laws that party has passed, still, as the com- 
parative weakness of party organization in Switzerland has 
permitted the habit of giving a popular vote " on the mer- 
its " to grow up, measures are more likely to be judged 
irrespective of those who advocate them than could well 
happen in any representative assembly where party leader- 
ship exists. In an assembly party solidarity and the hope 
of gaining party advantage disturb the minds of legislators. 
But the People have no gain or loss to look for save what the 
law itself may bring. 

In a representative democracy there ought to be some 
check upon the legislature. The Swiss Constitution does 
not, like the American, give a veto to the Executive, and the 
two Chambers do not sufficiently differ from one another in 
composition and type of opinion to constitute their possible 
disagreement an adequate restraint on hasty action. Thus 
the only check available is that of a popular vote. 

Finally, there must somewhere in every government be 
a power which can say the last word, can deliver a decision 
from which there is no appeal. In a democracy it is only 
the People who can thus put an end to controversy. 

These considerations have not entirely removed the objec- 
tions which a very few Swiss as well as some foreign critics 
continue to bring against the Referendum. Among such 
objections, which I state in order to present both sides of 
the case, the following, applicable to its use in the cantons 
as well as in the Confederation, may be noted. 

The status and authority of a legislature must suffer 
whenever a Bill it has passed is rejected, for the people 
become less deferential. Its sense of responsibility is re- 
duced, for it may be disposed to pass measures its judgment 
disapproves, counting on the people to reject them, or may 



396 SWITZERLAND PA bt n 

fear to pass laws it thinks needed lest it should receive a 
buffet from the popular vote. 

The people at large are not qualified, no not even the 
people of Switzerland, to form and deliver an opinion upon 
many subjects of legislation. " Imagine," said Welti, a 
famous leader, once President of the Confederation, " a 
cowherd or a stable-boy with the Commercial Code in his 
hand going to vote for or against it." * They may be ever 
so shrewd and ever so willing to do their duty, but they have 
not, and cannot have, the knowledge needed to enable them 
to judge, nor can the pamphlets distributed and the speeches 
made by the supporters or opponents of the measure convey 
to them the requisite knowledge. How can a peasant of 
Solothurn in a lonely valley of the Jura form an opinion 
on the appropriations in a financial Bill. Is the object a 
laudable one? Is it worth the money proposed to be al- 
lotted? Can the public treasury afford the expenditure? 
The voter cannot, as he might in the Landesgemeinde of 
Uri, ask for explanations : he must vote " Yes " or " No " 
there and then. The arguments advanced in the Legisla- 
ture have taught him little, for its debates are most scantily 
reported. If it is said, " Let ignorant voters take the ad- 
vice of their more instructed neighbours," that is an admis- 
sion that the notion of referring these matters to the deci- 
sion of the average individual who cannot judge for himself 
is wrong in principle, for it is the voter's own opinion, not 
some one else's, which it is desired to elicit. 

The number of abstentions at Referendum votings is large 
enough to show that many a voter either cares little for his 
civic duties, or knows his unfitness to perform them. As 
the proportion of these abstentions to the number of "quali- 
fied voters does not seem to diminish, has not the gain to the 
political education of the people been less than was expected ? 

The results of a popular vote cannot be always deemed 
a true expression of the popular mind, which is often cap- 
tured by phrases, led astray by irrelevant issues, perplexed 
by the number of distinct points which a Bill may contain, 
and thus moved by its dislike to some one point to reject 
a measure which, taken as a whole, it would approve. No 

i This the people did when that Code was, after Welti's time, en- 
acted. 



chap, xxix LEGISLATION BY THE PEOPLE 397 

amendments are possible. The vote must be given for tbe 
Bill and for tbe whole Bill. Or again, a laudable measure 
may be rejected because it has been submitted at the same 
time with another which displeases a large section of the 
voters. Having first voted against the one he dislikes, the 
less intelligent citizen goes on to negative that which comes 
next, unregardful of its contents. 

Frequent Eeferenda, not to speak of their cost, lay too 
heavy a burden upon the voter, who relapses into a wearied 
indifference or gives an unconsidered vote. This happens 
in those cantons which, claiming to be progressive, pass 
many laws. The citizen has other things besides politics 
to attend to, and the unrest and agitation produced by con- 
stant appeals to the people by Referenda as well as at elec- 
tions disgust the quiet solid man. 

When a law has been carried by a small majority, its 
moral authority may suffer more than would be the case 
had opinion been nearly equally divided in the Assembly. 
In countries where the legislature rules, a law passed is 
accepted because it comes in the regular way from the 
usual organ of the people's will, and few enquire what was 
the majority that passed it. But when it has gone to a 
popular vote, a section of the citizens are arrayed against it. 
They become its opponents, and feel aggrieved if they are 
overridden by only a few votes. 1 

The most comprehensive but also the vaguest argument 
adduced against the Referendum is that it retards political, 
social, and economic progress. This objection made some 
noise in the world when currency was given to it by Sir 
Henry Maine in 1885. 2 It particularly impressed Eng- 
lishmen, of the class which had been wont to associate 
democratic rights with an aggressive radicalism. To find 
conservatism among the masses was to them a joyful sur- 
prise. The Referendum appeared as a harbour of refuge. 
On the other hand, some advocates of social reform, in 
Switzerland as elsewhere, complain that State Socialism 
and Labour legislation do not advance fast enough. To 
estimate the truth there may be in these opposite views 

1 No case was brought to my knowledge in which this had occurred. 
In Switzerland, as in America, minorities usually acquiesce quietly, 
perceiving that only thus can free government go on. 

2 In his book entitled Popular Government. 



398 SWITZERLAND part ii 

would require a careful examination, not only of the in- 
trinsic merits of each rejected law, but also whether in each 
case the law was seasonable, suited to the sentiments of the 
people, and therefore fit to be forthwith applied with gen- 
eral acquiescence. Space failing me for such an examina- 
tion, it is enough to observe that although prejudice or un- 
due caution has in some cases delayed the march of eco- 
nomic or social reforms which the Assembly proposed, the 
best Swiss authorities hold, and hold more strongly now 
than thirty years ago, that no general harm has followed. 
Every system has its defects. Those who, knowing Eng- 
land or France, compare the legislation of those countries 
with that of Switzerland since 1874 will find in the two 
former instances in which progress has suffered from the 
pressure exerted upon members of the legislature by classes 
or by trades whose interests were allowed to prevail against 
those of the nation. 

Some of the arguments here summarized are, like that 
last mentioned, not supported by Swiss experience. Some 
apply to the action of the people when they elect represen- 
tatives hardly less than when they vote on laws, because 
an election is often (though less in Switzerland than in 
Britain or America) an expression of opinion on political 
issues as well as on the merits of the candidate. To others 
weight may be allowed. It is true that there are laws on 
which the bulk of the voters are not qualified to pass judg- 
ment, true also that demagogues might use the Eeferendum 
as a means of attacking a legislature or its leaders, true 
that the less intelligent voter is sometimes led away from the 
merits of a law by extraneous considerations, such as party 
spirit or religious prejudice, or even the prospects of the 
crops, which may have put him in a bad humour. Absten- 
tions are so numerous that some cantons have imposed pen- 
alties, and of those thus driven to vote, many drop in a 
blank paper, having no opinion to express. 

Here let me revert to the part which the system of Popu- 
lar Voting plays in the constitutional scheme of Government. 
It disjoins the Legislative from the Executive Department 
more completely than any form of the representative sys- 
tem can do, because it permits not only the Executive Coun- 
cil (Federal or Cantonal as the case may be) but also the 



chap, xxix LEGISLATION BY THE PEOPLE 399 

Legislative body, which in the Confederation both chooses 
and directs the Federal Council, and which in some cantons 
chooses, and in all directs or influences the Executive Coun- 
cil of the cantons, to continue its normal action whether or 
not its legislation is approved. Where the function of ulti- 
mately enacting the law has been transferred from the rep- 
resentative body to the people, the people become the true 
Legislature, and their representatives merely a body which 
prepares and drafts measures, and which, in conjunction 
with the Executive Council, carries on the current business 
of the nation. Thus it follows that neither the Executive 
Council nor the Legislative Assembly need be changed be- 
cause a law submitted by them is not passed. The people 
reject the law, as a merchant may reject the plan for a 
business operation which his manager suggests, but they do 
not dismiss the Assembly any more than the merchant dis- 
misses his manager. The function of administering the 
laws continues to be smoothly carried on by the same set of 
officials, so long as their personal character and capacity 
makes them trusted. 

Under the French and English system this does not hap- 
pen, because the defeat of an important Bill which the Min- 
istry has proposed means the displacement of the Ministry, 
while under the American system, although the President 
and his officials who administer public affairs cannot be 
ejected by the majority in Congress, yet since they have 
(through the President's veto) a share in legislation and 
are closely associated with one or other of the great parties 
in Congress, they practically share the fortunes of the 
parties, and cannot expect re-election when the party has 
incurred popular displeasure by its legislative errors or 
omissions, whereas the Swiss system tends to reduce party 
feeling because it makes legislation a matter by which a 
party need not stand or fall. 

Neither in the Confederation nor in the cantons is it 
now proposed to abolish the Referendum on laws, nor has 
any canton discarded it, though some have specifically ex- 
cepted financial laws. Statesmen who would like to restrict 
it to some classes of laws admit both the practical difficulty 
of defining those classes, and the objections to leaving dis- 
cretion in the hands of a legislature. The people as a 



400 SWITZERLAND PAB t n 

whole value the privilege. The party which long held a 
majority in the Assembly, though sometimes annoyed at 
its results, were and are debarred by their principles from 
trying to withdraw it; while the Conservative and Roman 
Catholic Oppositions, less fettered by theory, sometimes 
found the Referendum useful as a means of defeating Rad- 
ical measures. The institution has become permanent, not 
only because the people as a whole are not disposed to 
resign any function they have assumed, but also because it 
is entirely conformable to their ideas and has worked in 
practice at least as well as a purely representative system 
worked before or would be likely to work now. There are 
differences as to the extent to which the principle should 
be carried, but although the Obligatory form has been 
adopted in most cantons, the opinion of some experienced 
statesmen prefers the Optional form because the constant 
pollings which the former involves weary the citizen, and 
make him less careful to give a well-considered vote. In 
the Confederation the objections to obligatory submission 
of every bill seem graver, for this would throw a heavy 
burden on the voters, producing more trouble and unrest 
than does the agitation needed to obtain signatures to the 
few demands for submission. 

On a review of the whole matter the foreign observer will 
probably reach the following conclusions. 

Any harm done by the Referendum in delaying useful 
legislation has been more than compensated by the good 
done in securing the general assent of the people where their 
opinion was doubtful, in relieving tension, providing a safety- 
valve for discontent, warning the legislatures not to run 
ahead of popular sentiment. 

It has worked particularly well in small areas, such as 
Communes (including cities) where the citizens have full 
knowledge of the facts to be dealt with. 1 

There is nothing to show that it has reduced the quality 
of the members of the Assembly or Cantonal Councils 

i Geneva was mentioned to me as a canton in which an independent 
committee of citizens had succeeded in defeating, on a popular vote, a 
scheme propounded by the Council, which they deemed likely to reduce 
the standard and variety of university teaching. Similarly, an ancient 
tower, associated with the history of the city, which the Council had 
meant to remove was saved by an appeal to popular vote. 



chap, xxix LEGISLATION BY THE PEOPLE 401 

or tended to discourage capable men from seeking a seat 
thereon. 

It has served to give stability to the government by dis- 
joining questions of Measures from questions of Men, and 
has facilitated the continuance in office of experienced mem- 
bers of the executive and the legislature. Taking its work- 
ing over a series of years, it would seem to have reduced 
rather than intensified party feeling. 

It has helped not only to give to the governments of the 
Confederation and the cantons a thoroughly popular char- 
acter, obliging each citizen to realize his personal share in 
making the law he is to obey, but, so far from " atomizing " 
the nation into so many individuals, has rather drawn to- 
gether all classes in the discharge of a common duty, and 
become a unifying force giving democracy a fuller self- 
consciousness. 

It has shown the people to be, if not wiser, yet slightly 
more conservative than was expected. But their aversion 
to change has been due to caution, not to unreason, and 
seldom to prejudice. 

In recognizing the success of the Referendum we must 
never forget how much the conditions of Switzerland favour 
its application. It is specially suited to small areas, and 
to small populations not dominated by party spirit. 1 

Working of the Initiative 

The working of the Initiative, i.e. the right of a group 
of citizens to propose measures to be enacted by a vote 

1 A Swiss friend whose great abilities and experience entitle his 
opinion to high respect sums up to me his view as follows: 

" The Referendum compels all citizens to occupy themselves with 
and pass a judgment upon the practical questions of the State, and 
thus draws the individual directly into the interest of the State, while 
anchoring the State in the People. 

" This means for the individual citizen an enrichment of his person- 
ality, and, reciprocally, the State is obliged to keep the instruction 
of the People on the highest possible level. 

" The Referendum makes all classes and districts in Switzerland part- 
ners in State tasks and duties and creates therewith a very strong 
feeling of membership in one community. Every Swiss submits him- 
self to a decision by the people." 

This sense of a common duty to the State seems to be stronger in 
Switzerland than anywhere else in the world. I remember that when 
long ago in a secluded Alpine valley I asked a peasant whether all 

VOL. I 2D 



402 SWITZERLAND pabt n 

of the people, needs to be considered apart from the Refer- 
endum, for though its theoretic basis is the same, the condi- 
tions of its application are different. 

It claims to be the necessary development of the idea 
of Popular Sovereignty. The people, it is held, cannot truly 
rule if they act through representatives or delegates. The 
individual will of the citizen cannot be duly expressed save 
by his own voice or vote. His representative may, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, misrepresent him. The Refer- 
endum doubtless secures him against being bound by any 
law on which he has had no chance of expressing his own 
will. But the opportunity of exercising his volition against 
a law submitted confers a right of Negation only. He 
needs also the Positive Right of framing and placing before 
his fellows the law which expresses his own will and mind. 
Only thus is the freedom of each citizen secured. 1 

Abstract theory has been reinforced by the argument that 
since representative assemblies are apt to consist of one 
class, or to be dominated by class interests, they cannot be 
trusted to bring forward and lay before the people the meas- 
ures which the people desire. As the Referendum protects 
the people against the legislature's sins of commission, so 
the Initiative is a remedy for their omissions. Individuals 
may propound excellent schemes and recommend them at 
meetings and through the press without affecting an in- 
different or hostile legislature. If the People is really to 
rule they ought to have their chance of going straight to the 
People. This argument has force in those American States 
where great corporations know how to " take care of a legis- 
lature." But the Swiss advocates of the Initiative have 
been moved chiefly by abstract principles. Their strength 
lies in the universal acceptance of Popular Sovereignty as 
a dogma, whereof the Initiative seems the logical result. 

We have already seen that in the Confederation, where 
it exists only for proposals to amend the Constitution, the 

the dwellers had not the right to attend and vote in the Landesge- 
meinde, he answered, "Not the right merely, the Duty" (Es ist ihre 
Pflicht). 

i An interesting abstract of the doctrines of Rittinghausen and Con- 
siderant, writers of the last generation who influenced opinion on this 
subject in their time, may be found in the (already mentioned) excel- 
lent book of Th. Curti, he Referendum, pp. 200-207. 



chap, xxix LEGISLATION BY THE PEOPLE 403 

Initiative has been demanded only eight times and amend- 
ments proposed by it only twice carried. These cases are 
worth noting. They included a law to forbid the killing 
of animals without first stunning them by a blow. This, 
though proposed in the guise of a desire to prevent cruelty 
to animals, was really a manifestation of the anti-Semitism 
then rife in Continental Europe. It was carried against 
the advice of the Federal Assembly, and although a similar 
measure had, when passed by the Cantonal Councils of 
Bern and Aargau, been quashed by the Federal Council 
and the Assembly as inconsistent with the guarantees of 
religious liberty provided by the Federal Constitution. 1 
Some cantons enforce it, but the Federal Assembly has 
never passed an Act imposing penalties for its breach. 
This was an inauspicious beginning. The next two con- 
stitutional amendments proposed by the popular Initiative 
were one declaring the " right to labour," another proposing 
to distribute the surplus of the Federal customs revenue 
among the cantons in proportion to population, two francs 
for each person. Both were rejected in 1894, the former 
by a vote of three to one, the latter by a majority of nearly 
three to two; and a like fate befell two other proposals 
made by Initiative in 1900, one to introduce proportional 
representation in the election of the National Council, 
and the other to choose the (Executive) Federal Council by 
popular vote, as well as one similarly made in 1903 to ex- 
clude resident foreigners in computing population for the 
purpose of determining the number of representatives to 
which a canton is entitled. But in 1918 an amendment 
introducing proportional representation was carried. This 
is the most noteworthy instance of a large constitutional 
change effected by the Initiative method against the will 
of the majority of the legislature. 

In the cantons, where the Initiative has been much more 
freely used, it has held its ground, but does not seem to 
make further way. It has not been the parent of any re- 
forms which might not have been obtained, though not so 
quickly, through the legislature, while it has sometimes 
placed unwise laws on the statute book. Zurich, where it 

1 This objection was of course overridden by the insertion of the 
amendment as a part of the Constitution. 



404 SWITZERLAND PABT n 

can be demanded by 5000 citizens — a small number for so 
large a canton — has resorted most frequently to it. Some- 
times the prudence of the Cantonal Council, dissuading the 
people from the particular plan proposed and substituting 
a better one, averted unfortunate results, 1 while in the case 
of an ill-considered banking law the Federal authorities 
annulled the law as inconsistent with the Federal Consti- 
tution. Several times the people have shown their good sense 
in rejecting mischievous schemes proposed by this method. 
~Not very different have been the results in St. Gallen, Bern, 
and Aargau. The French-speaking cantons use it less. 

When the conditions under which the Initiative works 
are compared with those of the Referendum we are not 
surprised to find that the opinion of statesmen was for a 
long time less favourable to the latter. Its opponents argue 
that whereas a law submitted to the people by Referendum 
must have already been carefully considered by the Federal 
Council which drafted it, and by both Houses of the Na- 
tional Assembly, a Bill proposed by Initiative emanates 
from a group of more or less intelligent and instructed 
citizens, having never run the gauntlet of independent crit- 
ics, possibly hostile, certainly competent by their knowledge 
and experience. It may be crude in conception, unskilful 
in form, marred by obscurities or omissions. It will often 
suffer in practice from the fact that it has not proceeded 
from those who will, as the Executive, have the function of 
administering it, and are thus aware of the practical diffi- 
culties it may have to overcome. It might be dangerous 
if applied to agreements made between cantons or with 
foreign States ; and it would render the course of normal 
legislation more or less provisional, because it may suddenly 
cut across existing laws, its relation to which has not been 
duly considered. These objections, which the early history 
of the Initiative tended to support, would not be conclusive 
if it could be shown to be the only remedy against the prej- 
udices, or the class selfishness, or the subjection to private 
interests, that may prevent a legislative body from passing 
measures which the people deliberately, and not merely by 
a sudden impulse, desire to see enacted. There have been 
times in England, as in other countries, when a legislature 
i This happened in the case of a proposal to forbid vivisection. 



chap, xxix LEGISLATION BY THE PEOPLE 405 

refused to pass laws which a majority of the adult male 
population, perhaps even of the registered electors, seemed 
to desire. Does such a state of things exist in Switzerland 
or in any of its cantons ? If so, why do not the electors 
when choosing their representatives make known their wishes, 
and insist that the legislature shall carry them out forth- 
with? It is douhtless possible that parliamentary obstruc- 
tion, or corrupt influences applied to members, or the per- 
tinacity of a leading statesman who dominates his party and 
holds it back from some particular measure, may delay the 
gratification of the popular will. But (excluding large- 
scale corruption, unknown in Switzerland) such cases must 
be rare; such causes can have only a temporary operation. 
The Initiative has in recent years begun to be more fre- 
quently demanded in the Confederation, 1 so that men, not- 
ing that virtual efTacement of the distinction between Con- 
stitutional Amendments and Laws which now permits all 
sorts of proposals to be submitted under the guise of Amend- 
ments to the Constitution, have begun to ask why the right 
of Initiative should not be extended to Laws. The require- 
ment of 50,000 signatures might be retained for Laws be- 
cause the number of Swiss citizens has risen greatly since 
1891, and a larger number, say 80,000, might be required 
for the proposal of an Amendment. As things stand, the 
people, though they cannot propose a law when it is called 
a " law " can propose what is really a law by calling it an 
Amendment, and can repeal an existing Law by enacting 
an Amendment which overrides it. The change in form 
would not increase the volume of direct popular legislation, 
while it might help to preserve for the Constitution that 
character of a Fundamental Instrument which it is fast 
losing. 2 The critical period of a threatened strife of classes 
which has arrived for Switzerland as for other countries 
may suggest that the time is scarcely ripe for a final judg- 
ment on the system of Direct Legislation. But I must 
add that, revisiting the country in 1919, I found the opin- 

i It is sometimes alleged that the habit of withdrawing enactments 
as " urgent " from the category of those which can be made the sub- 
ject of a Keferendum may have contributed to this larger use of the 
Initiative, but other causes also may be suggested. 

2 In the Canton of Zurich where the Initiative exists for Laws, en- 
actments desired are usually proposed as Laws, and the popular Initia- 
tive in constitutional amendments is rare. 



. 



406 SWITZERLAND part n 

ion of thoughtful men much more favourable to the Initia- 
tive than I had found it in 1905. Many held it to be 
valuable as checking the undue power of any party which 
should long command a majority in the legislature: few 
dwelt upon the danger present to the mind of statesmen in 
other countries, that it may offer a temptation to irrespon- 
sible demagogues seeking by some bold proposal to capture 
the favour of the masses. 

The foregoing account will have shown that such success 
as has been attained in Switzerland by the method of direct 
popular legislation is due to the historical antecedents of 
the Swiss people, to their long practice of self-government 
in small communities, to social equality and to the pervading 
spirit of patriotism and sense of public duty. No like suc- 
cess can be assumed for countries where similar conditions 
are absent. A popular vote taken over wide areas and in 
vast populations, such as those of Great Britain or France, 
might work quite differently. The habits and aptitudes 
of the peoples may not have fitted them for it. In Switzer- 
land it is a natural growth, racy of the soil. There are 
institutions which, like plants, flourish only on their own 
hillside and under their own sunshine. The Landesge- 
meinde thrives in Uri; the Referendum thrives in Zurich. 
But could saxifrages or soldanellas gemming a pasture in 
the High Alps thrive if planted in Egypt? As, however, 
the plan of Direct Popular legislation has been tried on a 
large scale in the States of North-Western America also, 
a general judgment on its merits may be reserved till its 
working there has been examined. 

EXTRACT FROM AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BY THE 
FIRST CONSUL (BONAPARTE) IN 1801 TO THE 
SWISS DELEGATES 

" Songez bien, Messieurs," disait Bonaparte, " a Pimportance 
des traits caracteristiques, c'est ceux qui, eloignant Tidee de ressem- 
blanc avec les autres Etat3 ecartent aussi la pensee de vous con- 
fondre avec eux. Je sais bien que le regime des democraties est 
accompagne de nombreux inconvenients, et qu'il ne soutient pas 
un examen rationnel: mais enfin il est etabli depuis des siecles, il 
a son origine dan le climat, la nature, les besoins et les habitudes 
primitives des habitants; il ist conforme au genie des lieux, et il 
ne faut pas avoir raison, en depit de la necessite, quand l'usage et 



chap, xxix LEGISLATION BY THE PEOPLE 407 

la raison se trouvent en contradiction, c'est le premier qui l'emporte. 
Vous voudriez aneantir ou restreindre les landsgemeinde, mais 
alors il ne faut plus parler de democratic ni de republicains. Les 
peuples libres n'ont jamais souffert qu'on les privat de l'exercice 
immediat de la souverainete. lis ne connaissent ni ne goutent les 
inventions modernes d'un systeme representatif qui detruit les 
attributs essentiels d'une republique. Je vous parle comme si 
j'etais moi-meme un Suisse. Pour les petits Etats, le systeme 
federatif est eminemment avantageux. Je suis moi-meme ne 
montagnard; je connais l'esprit qui les anime. 

" D'heureuses circonstances m'ont place a la tete du gouverne- 
ment francais, mais je me regarderais comme incapable de gouver- 
ner les Suisses. II vous est deja difficile de trouver un landamman ; 
s'il est de Zurich, les Bernois seront mecon tents et vice-versa; 
elisezvous un protestant, les catholiques feront opposition. 

" Plus j'ai reflechi sur la nature de votre pays et sur la diversite 
de ses elements constitutifs, plus j'ai ete convaincu de Fimpossi- 
bilite de la soumettre a un regime uniforme; tout vous conduit 
au federalisme. Quelle difference n v a-t-il pas, par exemple, 
entre vos montagnards et vos citadins! Voudriez-vous forcer l°s 
cantons democratiques a vivre sous le meme gouvernement que les 
villes, ou bien songeriez-vous a introduire dans celles-ci, a Berne, 
par exemple, la democratie pure? 

" La Suisse ne ressemble a aucun autre Etat, soit par les evene- 
ments qui s'y sont succedes depuis plusieurs siecles, soit par les 
differentes langues, les differentes religions, et cette extreme differ- 
ence de mceurs qui existe entre ses differentes parties. La nature a 
fait votre Etat federatif, vouloir la vaincre n'est pas d'un homme 
sage." 

In 1803 Napoleon wrote to the Swiss as follows: 

"Une forme de gouvernement qui n'est pas le resultat d'une 
longue serie d'evenements, de malheurs, d'efforts, d'enterprises de 
la part d'un peuple, ne prendra jamais racine." 



CHAPTEE XXX 



POLITICAL PARTIES 



The stability and consistency which have marked gen- 
eral policy as well as legislation in Switzerland are often 
ascribed to the predominance since 1848 of one political 
party. The causes of this fact, as well as the other cir- 
cumstances that affect the party politics of the country, 
need some explanation. Nowhere in Europe might there 
appear to be more abundant materials for the emergence 
of many parties and for their frequent regroupings or trans- 
formations, for where else can be found so many diversities 
of racial character, of religion, of speech, of forms of in- 
dustry and of the conflicting economic interests to which 
such forms give rise? Yet nowhere has the ship of state 
been so little tossed by party oscillations. 

Switzerland had her War of Secession in 1847. Seven 
Roman Catholic cantons who had withdrawn from the Con- 
federation to form a federation of their own, were brought 
to submission in a short and almost bloodless struggle which 
was followed by no revenge. The Constitution of 1848 
sealed the reunion of all the cantons and created closer ties 
between them. The Liberals of that day who framed the 
Constitution held a large majority in the country, and long 
held it. After a time, however, differences of temperament 
and opinion divided the party. The larger section is now 
known as the Left or Eadical party, and the much smaller 
and less advanced section has retained the name of Liberal, 
though it is often called the Centre. Meantime the Catholic 
minority of 1846-48, the men of the Sonderbund, kept to- 
gether and were ultimately consolidated by the political 
disputes which arose over the dogma of Papal Infallibility 
adopted by the Vatican Council of 1870. They form a 
third party variously described as Catholic or Clerical or 
Ultramontane. There were thus three parties. After 1880 

408 






chap, xxx POLITICAL PARTIES 409 

Marxian doctrines began to spread in the industrial centres, 
and a Socialist party arose which, though strong only in 
a few populous areas, increases in numbers and is extremely 
active. Its growth has been favoured by the large immi- 
gration of German working-men. More recently some ad- 
vanced members of the Radical Left detached themselves 
from it and became known as the Democratic Group, but 
they did not remain a distinct section. There were thus 
four or fi.Ye parties; but that which was once the advanced 
wing of the Liberal party and is now the Radical party 
commanded in 1918 more votes in both branches of the Na- 
tional Assembly than did all the other parties taken to- 
gether. 1 The League of Peasants party which has since 
appeared does not act as a political group except for the 
protection of agricultural interests, and it is not yet clear 
what its relations to the other parties will be. 

It is a singular fact, and a fortunate one for the country, 
that the lines of party do not coincide with those of race and 
language. Though the strength of the Radicals lies in the 
German-speaking and Protestant cantons, it draws support 
from French-speaking areas also, such as Vaud and Geneva, 
while the Clericals find adherents equally in German-speak- 
ing Luzern and in French-speaking Fribourg. The Social- 
ists are strongest in Zurich, and, to a less extent, in Aargau, 
Thurgau, and St. Gallen. The Old Liberals, also called 
Democratic Liberals, a small rank and file with able officers, 
come almost entirely from Protestant districts, and some 
have been returned to the Assembly in respect of their per- 
sonal eminence, not because they had a popular majority 
in the districts for which they sit. This willingness to find 
room for men of distinction is an idyllic feature of Swiss 
politics without parallel elsewhere. In France and in 
English-speaking countries there is a cry of triumph when 
a party leader is defeated at the polls: in Switzerland 

i In the National Council it had 102 members out of 189. In 1919 
when the election was held on the plan of Proportional Representation 
this party, though remaining the largest, did not obtain in the Na- 
tional Council a majority of the whole, but only 63 members, the 
Catholic Conservative party securing 41 seats, the Socialists 41, while 
the new group of Peasants, Artisans, and Bourgeois party won 26, and 
the Liberal Democratic Group 9. Seven seats went to a so-called 
" Groupe de politique sociale," and two to Independents. The compo- 
sition of these groups may, however, soon begin to vary. 



410 SWITZERLAND part ii 

his opponents take pains to provide against such a con- 
tingency. 

It was in ecclesiastical, rather than in language or in 
class distinctions, that the foundations of these parties were 
laid. Ever since the days of Zwingli, religion has been a 
cause of division. It nearly broke in pieces the old Con- 
federacy of Thirteen Cantons. But to this must be added 
the difference that everywhere exists between men of a 
cautious mind and conservative temper, and those who are 
more prone to change or more disposed to trust the masses 
of the people. The latter are the Radicals, the former either 
Catholics or conservative Liberals. Rich men are in most 
countries apt to belong to the former category, but ,in 
Switzerland the line of party division does not coincide with 
that of class. There are plenty of Conservatives among 
the peasants, plenty of Radicals among the educated and 
well-to-do. The Socialists are, broadly speaking, a class 
party, but they include not only many of the minor and 
poorly paid Government employees, but also some few philo- 
sophic democrats not belonging to the ranks of Labour; and 
though standing outside the churches, they find some sym- 
pathizers among Roman Catholic and also among Protestant 
pastors. Swiss Socialists are rather non-Christian than 
anti-Christian, most of them less anti-Christian than are those 
of France, and Swiss Radicalism is hostile only to Clerical- 
ism, not to Christianity. 

The Radicals correspond broadly to the Liberal party in 
England, to the Left Centre and Democratic Left in France, 
and to the Liberals (now the National party) in Australia. 
Many shades of opinion may be found among them, but 
they are sharply distinguished from the Ul tramontanes 
by their hostility to sacerdotal claims and less sharply from 
the Liberals by their greater readiness to extend Federal 
authority and to use it for promoting schemes of social 
reform. Despite their name, they have, like all parties 
which have long enjoyed power, a good deal of administra- 
tive conservatism. A Radical who has arrived is not the 
same thing as a Radical on the road. 

The Liberals, who would in England be described as Mod- 
erate or Conservative Liberals, have lost ground in recent 
years, but are still influential by their intellectual distinc- 



chap, xxx POLITICAL PAKTIES 411 

tion and social weight. Clinging to the orthodox economics 
and laissez faire principles of last century, they are effective 
critics, strong for resistance, furnishing a counterpoise to 
the Socialists and others who would accelerate the process of 
change and extend the functions of the State. In the past, 
when more largely represented in the Assembly, they fur- 
nished the Federal Council with many admirable members, 
highly qualified for administrative functions. 

Political life, generally tranquil in the Confederation, is 
more active, and occasionally more troubled, in the cantons. 
In the mountainous and agricultural regions, which are 
largely Catholic, it is chiefly local questions that occupy the 
people. Things move slowly and quietly, except in the ex- 
citable Italian population of Ticino, where the struggle be- 
tween priestly influence and revolutionary ideas has some- 
times led to outbreaks of violence. In manufacturing can- 
tons like Zurich, Thurgau, Aargau, and Basle parties are 
more active because the issues that arise are more various 
and stirring, but these issues are so numerous, one canton 
differing from another, that it is impossible to give a general 
description of cantonal politics. The parties are not neces- 
sarily the same as in the Confederation. They do not al- 
ways even bear the same names. In Geneva, for instance, 
those who in Federal politics are called Liberals describe 
themselves as Democrats. National organizations have had 
no such all-pervasive power as in the United States or in 
Australia, so Cantonal elections are usually fought on Can- 
tonal, not on National issues, yet similar influences and 
tendencies are visible, and the same types of opinion appear. 
The Catholic is ready to rally to his Church. The Socialist 
complains that labour gets less than its due, and urges that 
the canton or the commune should undertake new work and 
extend its grasp further and further over the means of 
production and the methods of distribution. Meanwhile 
the somewhat stolid peasant landowner and the respectable 
middle-class shopkeeper or banker's clerk look askance at 
these novelties, much as the same kind of man does in rural 
Prance and rural Germany. 

Except in urban manufacturing communities, where new 
ideas and schemes are afloat among the workers and munici- 
pal elections are fought by the Socialists, party politics have 



412 SWITZERLAND PA kt n 

roused little heat. In some cantons, Eadicals are scarcely 
distinguishable from Liberals ; in others, as in Geneva, Ead- 
icals may for election purposes work along with Socialists. 
Some of the older rural cantons are so purely Roman Cath- 
olic that one can hardly talk of any other party, while in 
others Radicalism has had practically no opposition to con- 
front. In both sets of cantons there were slight oscillations 
affecting the complexion of the Cantonal Legislature, while 
the representation in the Houses of the Federal Assembly 
was varying little from one election to another. 

Returning to the Confederation, let us note the questions 
on which controversy is most active. It is seldom percep- 
tible as regards foreign policy, for this is prescribed by the 
general sense that a neutrality friendly to all its neighbours 
alike must be preserved. Even during the war of 1914—18 
the strong sympathy felt all over French-speaking Switzer- 
land for the Western Allies, and that extended by a part of 
the German-speaking population to the Central Powers, dis- 
turbed the country only for a few moments when the action 
of some military authorities, and, more rarely, that of the 
Federal Executive, was impugned. There is, as in nearly 
all Federal Governments, a division of opinion between 
those who favour the extension of Federal power and those 
who cling to cantonal rights, and this has grown more evi- 
dent here since the Radical majority have leant towards 
Etati&me, i.e. an extension of the functions of government. 1 
On the whole, the Radicals are Centralizers, the Ultramom 
tanes and Liberals Cantonalists. A combination of these 
two latter parties, coupled with the conservative instinct 
of a large section of the rural Radicals, procured the rejec- 
tion, at several votings by Referendum, of proposals for the 
assumption of new powers by the National Government, yet 
in the case of the acquisition of the railways this instinct 
yielded to the prospect of economic advantage. 2 In matters 

i fitatwme has suffered in public favour through the failure in econ- 
omy and efficiency, which here, as well as in England and the United 
States, were noted in the administration (during the recent war) of 
several departments which had to bear a severe strain. 

2 A further reason was that the holding by Germans of a large pro- 
portion of the shares in the Gothard railway, an undertaking of vast 
international importance, had made it politically desirable for the 
Swiss Government to obtain full control of that line; and to do this 
it seemed necessary to acquire the other lines also. 



chap, xxx CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES 413 

of social reform, each scheme is considered on its merits, 
and the cautiously progressive policy of the Radicals has 
been generally approved, though the Socialists and the small 
group of Radical Democrats desired to quicken the pace. 1 
Economic issues have fallen into the background since a 
protective tariff was adopted: it is only some of the older 
Liberals who cast longing, lingering looks behind at the 
days of free trade. Religion, especially where it affects de- 
nominational teaching in the schools, excites more feeling. 
The leaders of the Radicals favour purely secular instruc- 
tion, as do the Socialists, while the Clericals and most of 
the Liberals stand on the other side. As, however, the con- 
trol of elementary schools is primarily a matter for the can- 
tons, this battle is fought chiefly in those cantons where 
Roman Catholics and Protestants are fairly balanced. Al- 
most the only question contested on purely party grounds, i.e. 
with a view to the effect which its determination may have 
upon party strength, was that of the representation of mi- 
norities. The dominant Radicals believed that Proportional 
Representation would weaken the hands of government both 
in the legislative and the executive departments by multiply- 
ing sections in the legislature and reducing the majorities 
needed to give stability. The Socialists, as well as the Ul- 
tramontanes and the Liberals, sections whose representa- 
tives in the National Council are smaller than their strength 
in the constituencies entitle them to, expected to secure by 
it an increase in their respective numbers. As already ob- 
served, it was carried in 1918 and put in force at the elec- 
tions of 1919. Among other proposals for constitutional 
change the most prominent is that of transferring the choice 
of the Federal Council from the National Assembly to a 
vote of the whole people. Advocated as a logical develop- 
ment of the principle of popular sovereignty by the Social- 
ists and more democratic Radicals, and by the Ultramon- 
tanes as a means of securing for them a better representa- 
tion in the Federal Council, it is resisted by the bulk of the 
Radical party as tending to disturb that confidence and cor- 
dial co-operation which has enabled that Executive Council 
to work well with the Legislature. This is not the only mat- 

i One does not hear of proposals to fix wages by law or to entrust 
the fixing thereof, as in Australia, to a Court of law. 



414 SWITZERLAND 



PART II 



ter in which the two extremes of Clericals and Socialists, 
sometimes reinforced by the Liberals, have stood together 
against the Eadicals. Both these extreme parties, favour 
female suffrage, both expecting to gain by it, for the Clericals 
count on the influence exerted by the priesthood upon women. 
Where there are several Opposition minority parties, there 
is always a likelihood of their joining forces against the 
majority. The same phenomenon has sometimes been seen 
in France, and it was seen in the British Parliament when 
in 1885 the Irish Nationalists united with the English Tories 
to turn out the Liberal ministry of that day. 

The spirit of party being weaker here than in most 
democracies, and the questions that divide the nation rarely 
rousing passion, one is not surprised to find political organ- 
izations less tightly knit and less actively worked than in 
England or the United States or Australia. Only the So- 
cialists have in their well-defined positive programme, in 
their Labour Unions, and in their propagandist zeal, both 
the motive and the means for building up a compact and 
militant system. These Unions constitute a network of 
associations and committees always available for political 
action. The sentiment of class solidarity and the hope of 
winning material benefits, coupled with the power of setting 
the whole voting machine in motion by pulling a few strings, 
give to this party, as they have given to the Labour party 
in Australia, a closer cohesion and stricter discipline than 
the other parties possess. It has moved like one man. Few 
internal dissensions have hitherto impaired its combatant 
efficiency but a divergence has recently (1919) appeared 
between the more and the less extreme wings. It puts for- 
ward its programme at every kind of election, National, 
Cantonal, Municipal, Communal, and requires its members 
in the legislatures to give an account to the party of their 
action there. 

Next to it in this respect stand the Clericals. Supported 
by the church organization, with priests in every commune 
and bishops giving directions from behind the lines, Ultra- 
montane Fribourg has been the chief headquarters, while 
Luzern, though less clerically minded, is a not less reliable 
centre for the action of Catholic laymen. The Radical party, 
with its stable majority in the Confederation, was not 



chap, xxx PAKTY OKGANIZATIONS 415 

equally impelled to strengthen itself by a system of local 
Committees for enrolling adherents, selecting candidates, 
and stimulating popular zeal. However, its general con- 
gress of delegates, chosen in each canton by the cantonal 
party authority, declares the policy of the party; and ap- 
points a central organ of thirty-two persons to give effect to 
the resolutions they pass. There is also a Central Com- 
mittee and (in nearly all cantons) a Cantonal Committee, 
with its small Executive Committee, for handling current 
business and keeping touch with the cantonal organizations, 
as well as local Committees in the large towns and the more 
populous rural areas. The Liberals have Committees in 
some cantons, but in others are feebly represented, and 
sometimes divided among themselves. 

To an Englishman, and still more to an American, the 
most conclusive evidence of the comparative insignificance 
of party organization is the absence of party funds. Poli- 
tics is run in Switzerland more cheaply than anywhere else 
in the world. Were there any serious amount of regular 
work to be done in organizing, in canvassing, in getting up 
meetings, in diffusing literature among the voters, money 
would be needed. Even the active propaganda of the Social 
Democrats involves little special expenditure, for their La- 
bour organizations, created for other purposes, do what is 
needed in the way of instruction, drill, and electioneering 
campaigns. This remarkable contrast with the phenomena 
of the United States is easily explained by the absence of the 
motive of personal profit. It is not worth anybody's while 
to spend money on party work except for some definite pub- 
lic purpose. Nobody in Switzerland has anything to gain 
for his own pocket by the victory of a party, for places are 
poorly paid, Federal places do not change hands after an 
election, Cantonal places are not important enough to de- 
serve a costly fight, nor could the expenditure of money at 
an election escape notice in these small communities. Only 
where there is a public aim, rousing for the moment keen 
public interest, must funds be raised. 

To complete this brief view of the influence of party in 
Switzerland, let us see how that influence works in the sev- 
eral modes and organs through which the people conduct 
the government of their country. These are (a) popular 



416 SWITZERLAND PABT n 

elections, (b) action by the Legislatures, (c) the action of 
the people voting directly on proposals submitted by Refer- 
endum and Initiative, and (d) the action of the Executive, 
which in the Confederation is the Federal Council, in the 
Cantons the Small Council. 

(a) Elections are the matter with which British, French, 
and American parties chiefly occupy themselves. It is at 
and through these that they make their appeals to the citi- 
zens, arraign their adversaries, proclaim the benefits they 
propose to confer on the community. 

In Switzerland elections are more numerous than in Eng- 
land or Canada, and quite as numerous as in France, though 
not so numerous as in sorely-burdened America. Terms of 
office are short, and many posts which in other countries are 
filled by the nomination of the executive or the legislature, 
are here in the direct gift of the people. In the Confedera- 
tion the members of the National Council are chosen for 
three years; those of the Cantonal Great Councils usually 
for the same term. In many cantons the smaller or Execu- 
tive Council and the judges, as well as some other officials, 
are elected by the people, and for short terms. There are 
also communal elections. This frequent invocation of the 
citizen has a good side in keeping his interest alive, and a 
less good side in exhausting that interest by making the 
exercise of civic rights occur so often that he may cease to 
scrutinize the merits of the candidates. One hears it said, 
" Our frequent voting tires the peasant and the workman : 
he cannot even have his Sunday for recreation." Judicious 
observers wish to see the number of elections reduced, but 
they admit that the evil is reduced by the habit of re-electing 
the occupant of a post. 

The extent to which the interest of the voter is maintained 
can be gauged better in Switzerland than elsewhere by the 
percentage of the citizens who cast a vote, seeing that the 
parties (except the Social Democrats) seldom work hard 
to bring them up to the polls. Allowing for the absence of 
this factor, and remembering that with manhood suffrage 
the percentage of persons actually voting must be expected 
to be a trifle lower than where the suffrage is restricted to 
the slightly richer and less migratory part of the population, 
Switzerland stands well. The proportion of actual to pos- 



chap, xxx ELECTIONS 417 

sible votes is rather larger than the average of Great Brit- 
ain or Australia, and as good as that of the United States; 
and it is said to be better now in cantons where all offices 
are filled by direct popular voting than it was or is under 
the old system of voting only for representatives. In 
Zurich the percentage now ranges from 70 to 80, whereas 
in former days it sometimes sank to 20. This, however, is 
a canton where proxies are permitted, where political life 
is comparatively strenuous, and in some of whose communes 
there are penalties for neglect. 1 In Appenzell failure to 
attend the Landesgemeinde (without reasonable excuse) is 
punished by a fine of ten francs, and some other cantons 
endeavour to compel voting by the imposition of fines for 
omission. Such provisions may seem to indicate indiffer- 
ence; yet they also indicate the high standard democratic 
theory sets up. Everywhere there will be " slackers," but 
no people shows so widely diffused and so constant an in- 
terest in the exercise of its political functions. 

The rational will which the citizens are expected to 
possess and to express by their votes may be perverted in 
three ways: by Fear, when the voter is intimidated; by 
Corrupt inducements, when he is bribed; by Fraud, when 
the votes are not honestly taken or honestly counted. In 
Switzerland none of these perversions exists to an appre- 
ciable extent. Intimidation is unheard of. There are prac- 
tically no landlords, and nowadays it would be impossible 
for employers to put pressure upon their workmen, and 
rarely possible for priests to drive in their flocks. 2 Neither 
do mobs terrorize the quiet citizen, for the polls are quiet 
and orderly. Only in one or two cantons have officials been 
occasionally charged with such interference as is common 
in France. Bribery is, if not unknown, yet uncommon, 
confined to some very few cantons, and that for three rea- 
sons. Few candidates could afford it. It is not worth a 
candidate's while, because there is no money and little glory 
to be had out of politics. It could hardly be kept secret in 

1 In these communes, if the citizen neither appeared to drop his 
ballot paper nor transmitted it in the official envelope within three 
days, it was sent for, and he was charged one franc for the trouble. 

2 Protestant pastors seldom seek to exert political influence, and in 
French-speaking cantons carefully abstain from even the appearance 
ol doing so. 

VOL. I 2 E 



418 SWITZERLAND PA bt ii 

communities so small as nearly all the Swiss constituencies 
are; and when it became known, the briber would be pun- 
ished by public anger and the bribed by public contempt. 

The elections are by universal testimony fairly conducted. 
I have heard of a case in which persons were brought in and 
hired to give votes, and of another in which ballot-boxes 
had been tampered with and the election annulled on that 
ground. But such instances are extremely rare. 

The cost is small. All those expenses which in England 
are called " official/' viz. the provision of polling-places, 
boxes, clerks, etc., are borne by the State, and the candi- 
date pays hardly anything for the hire of rooms, for agents, 
or for advertisements. Before 1918 a candidate for one of 
the large county divisions in England was legally entitled 
to pay almost as much to get returned to Parliament as all 
the candidates for the National Council taken together would 
pay at a General Election over all Switzerland. 

Note that the practice of " nursing " a constituency, by 
spending money in it some while before an election, or by 
giving large subscriptions to local purposes, generally chari- 
table or otherwise directly political — a practice which has 
during the last thirty years become common in England — 
is unheard of in Switzerland. To be in politics costs noth- 
ing beyond the loss of time involved in absence from a man's 
home work. Neither is a member expected to render those 
services which are demanded from a deputy in France. 
There are no decorations to be procured for constituents by 
voting in support of Ministers. And just as no candidate 
or member gains favour with his constituents by getting 
favours for them, so there are no titles or other marks of 
distinction by which the party dominant in the Federal or 
in a Cantonal Legislature could reward either the fidelity 
of its supporters or any pecuniary service rendered to its 
organization. 

(a) The functions of a party in an election begin with 
the choice of a candidate. This gives less trouble than it 
does in Britain and has long done in the United States, and 
though any citizen may present himself to the electors un- 
invited and unrecommended by an organization, this is un- 
usual and might be deemed unbecoming, so the local party 
Committee selects a person whom they think suitable, and 



chap, xxx ELECTIONS 419 

submits his name to a meeting, which, albeit open, will be 
attended only by members of the party. Precautions to 
exclude other persons are not found needful. At such a 
meeting other names may be proposed, but in general the 
nominations made by the Committee are adopted. Among 
the Social Democrats, who are thoroughly, and the Clericals, 
who are (in most places) tolerably well organized, the rec- 
ommendation of the Committee is followed as a matter of 
course. As regards the two other parties, things are in 
much the same condition as they were in Britain before the 
new system of representative party Committees began to be 
created between 1870 and 1890. The process is all the 
smoother in Switzerland, because the habit has been formed 
of re-electing for a fresh term the member of the legislature, 
or official, or judge whose post becomes vacant. He can 
thus easily observe the etiquette which prescribes that a 
member wishing to speak on politics should do so in some 
other constituency than his own. Barely is a member de- 
siring re-election rejected by the Committee, unless either 
his personal character or his general fidelity to the party 
has been seriously impugned. Earely is he rejected by the 
electors unless some marked change has occurred in the 
political sentiments of the constituency. " Semel electus, 
semper electus " is, broadly speaking, the principle observed. 
In selecting a candidate, a local resident, or at least a 
man connected by family with the locality, is preferred. 
Very seldom does a citizen of one canton become a member 
of the National Council for a constituency situate in some 
other, and of course no one but a citizen of the canton would 
be chosen for the Council of States. But localism, though 
stronger than in England or Australia, seems less strong 
than in the United States. Every party tries to select good 
candidates, for the voter is more independent than in Amer- 
ica or France, and values the man more than the label he 
bears. 1 One whom his neighbours respects for his character 

1 1 have, however, heard it remarked that the slight decline notice- 
able in the intellectual quality of representatives is due to the recent 
tendency to prefer docile candidates to men of more independent char- 
acter. It is also said that sensitive men sometimes refrain from 
candidacy, because the personal criticism to which politicians are 
subjected is more disagreeable in small constituencies, where every- 
body is personally known, than it can well be in large communities. 



420 SWITZERLAND PA rt n 

and attainments will often have the support of those who 
do not agree with his politics. Sometimes, when an election 
is at hand, the leaders of the chief parties, holding it right 
to give every section of opinion a fair representation, will 
agree npon a list of candidates, and though this is mostly 
settled on the basis of the voting strength each party com- 
mands, it may happen that eminent citizens are put on the 
list and carried who could not have been elected on a reg- 
ular party vote. The difference between Switzerland and 
the countries where issues are fundamental and party spirit 
runs high is best shown by the large number of uncontested 
constituencies. There have been years in which more than 
half the seats in the National Council were not fought. 
Sometimes, because one party has a large and permanent 
preponderance, sometimes because no issue is acute, the 
voters care more to be represented by their best citizens 
than by those most exactly in accord with their views. Be- 
ing in Zurich in 1905, I found that there were in the 
Executive Council of the canton three Radicals, three Lib- 
erals, and one Social Democrat, though the Radical vote 
was decidedly larger than the Liberal, and the Socialist vote 
was not then strong enough to have carried its man. All 
had been elected without a contest. So at the same time 
there was in the city of Zurich a Council consisting of four 
Liberals, two Radicals, and three Socialists, all chosen prac- 
tically without opposition : * and the two other parties had 
joined in electing a Social Democrat to the Supreme Court of 
the State from the feeling that it was only fair to let that sec- 
tion of the inhabitants have one of themselves on the bench. 

Sometimes — I have known it happen in Zurich — Rad- 
icals and Liberals agree to support one another's lists in 
Cantonal elections, and in Federal elections combine, under 
the name of the Freisinnige Partei, to issue a joint list. 
The proportion of the voters who remain outside any party 
organization is larger than in England, and far larger than 
in America, yet this does not necessarily make the result of 
contests unpredictable, for these unattached voters change 
their attitude very little, and usually support the sitting 
member. 

i Such little opposition as there was turned upon personal not po- 
litical reasons. 



chap, xxx INFLUENCE OF PAKTY 421 

(h) We now come to party action in the Legislature. 
Up to 1918 the Radicals held a majority in both the Na- 
tional Council and the Council of States, smaller in the 
latter body (in 1918 it was 25 against 19), because some 
of the less populous cantons always return Roman Catholic 
members. But, as already noted (p. 409), the elections of 
1919 changed the situation, giving no party an absolute 
majority, though the Radical party with its sixty members 
was the largest. The preponderance of one party, as well 
as the fact that when several parties unite in desiring to 
defeat a Bill this is best done by attacking it on a Referen- 
dum vote, had tended to keep party feeling at a low tem- 
perature. Things may now be different. When a question 
arises on which it is thought proper that the party should 
act together, the nominal leader does not issue a command 
but calls a meeting of the "fraction" (as it is called), to 
settle how its members should vote. Measures are, as a 
rule, discussed on their merits, with little regard (except 
on questions of constitutional change) to their effect on 
party interests, seldom deeply involved, since the last word 
rests with the people if the stage of submission by Referen- 
dum is reached. The general absence of passion has tended 
to make things move gently and facilitated compromise. 
It was chiefly when offices were in question that party mo- 
tives came into play, as for instance when a vacancy in the 
Federal Council had to be filled, and then (as already ob- 
served) the Radicals, while keeping a majority, recognized 
the claims of the minority parties. Other posts filled by 
the vote of the two Houses sitting together are the chan- 
cellorship, the headship of the army (when a general com- 
manding-in-chief is needed), 1 and the seats in the Federal 
Tribunal. In these cases party feeling may affect, with- 
out necessarily determining, the selection. 

(c) The Executive Federal Council is said to be some- 
times influenced by party proclivities in making civil or 
military appointments, but the daily conduct of its business 
seems little disturbed thereby. Though discharging most 
of the functions of a Cabinet, it lacks that solidarity of 
opinion (professed if not always existent) which is the note 
of French or British Cabinet Government, Its members 
i In ordinary times there are only colonels. 



422 SWITZERLAND part ii 

are expected to work together, and do work together, what- 
ever their differences of view. The opinion of the majority 
is the opinion of the Council, even if councillors should 
speak discrepancy in the Legislature. 1 

(d) The action of the People exercising their legislative 
power in voting on questions suhmitted by Referendum or 
Initiative has been already dealt with. Where the nature 
of the subject permits, the parties use their influence, and 
if the question raises issues either religious or socialistic, it 
may prove effective. Yet even on these questions a popular 
vote does not necessarily test the respective strength of the 
parties, for the Swiss voter .not only thinks for himself on 
the merits of the issue, but has also, and especially in rural 
areas, an aversion to novelties. When in doubt, he prefers 
to " stand upon the old paths." 

These remarks, however, apply much less to the Socialists, 
who, being well organized, cast a solid vote both at elec- 
tions and in Referenda, and rather less to the Catholic Con- 
servatives than to the other parties in which party allegiance 
is less strong. 

What has been said finds an application to cantonal party 
politics, subject, however, to the qualification that party 
feeling is warmer in most of the cantons than in the Con- 
federation. Leaders are apt to exert more influence, being 
better known personally, and in closer touch with the peo- 
ple. As a small kettleful of water boils more quickly than 
a large one, so the temperature of public sentiment rises 
faster in small communities, and the issues, being more 
frequently affected by local or personal considerations, make 
a more direct appeal to the people. Since national issues 
do not prevail everywhere, as in the United States or Can- 
ada, cantonal parties are more changeful, cantonal elections 
more uncertain. Elections call out a heavier poll than does 
a Referendum, because the issue has usually more interest 
for the average citizen. 

As respects the Communes and municipalities, national 
or cantonal issues count for little, local issues and the merits 

i Even in Great Britain it may happen that members of a Ministry 
are permitted to oppose one another in debate. I recall a case in which 
this happened when Woman Suffrage, a subject on which the Cabinet 
had not delivered a collective opinion, was being debated in the House 
of Commons. 



chap, xxx PAKTY NOT A STRONG FORCE 423 

of individual candidates for a great deal. The Socialists 
can, however, deliver a solid party vote, because their plat- 
forms are largely applicable to communal policies. In 
Swiss, as in nearly all Canadian, in Scottish, and in many 
English cities, there is a practical good sense which pre- 
vents national political partisanship from warping the mind 
of the citizen who desires capable administration. 

Why Party is not a Strong Force 

The comparative weakness in Switzerland of that party 
system by which government is worked in all other modern 
democracies makes it worth while to sum up the causes 
which have made it here and here only a secondary force. 

First. — For half a century or more there have not been 
before the nation any vital issues, such as was that of Mon- 
archy v. Democracy in France, or that of Slavery in the 
United States. The form of government has, in its out- 
lines, been long well settled, the bed-rock of democracy 
reached. There are no questions of colonial, hardly any of 
foreign policy. 

Secondly. — There has been little discontent with exist- 
ing economic conditions. Such resentment as the spread of 
socialistic doctrines reveals, does not (as in some countries) 
spring from poverty, much less from misery, among the 
workers, but mainly from theoretic considerations, and the 
wish to distribute more equitably the products of labour. 
Being fairly satisfied with their lot, the bulk of the people 
have been disposed to let well alone. 

Thirdly. — The old ecclesiastical antagonisms, if not ef- 
faced, for the Catholics complain of the treatment accorded 
to the religious orders, are not very acute. In the Con- 
federation religious equality reigns, subject to the pro- 
visions of the Constitution regarding bishoprics and re- 
ligious orders. As the cantons may (subject as aforesaid) 
regulate ecclesiastical matters, Catholic cantons can do what 
they please, so long as they do not transgress any guaran- 
teed right, and no Protestant canton thinks of interfering 
with its Catholics. 1 

1 1 know of a commune near Geneva in which Protestants subscribed 
to the erection of a Catholic Church, and Catholics to that of a Prot- 
estant. 



424 SWITZERLAND part n 

Fourthly. — Class hatreds have been absent. Differences 
of wealth exist, but there are no millionaires, nor any such 
displays of wealth as excite envy in countries like France 
or America. The desire to equalize conditions and instal 
the " proletariate " in power has created an aggressive 
party, but less bitterness has been aroused than is seen in 
other parts of Europe. 

Fifthly. — Personal ambition and personal leadership in 
public life are less conspicuous than in any other free coun- 
try. The Swiss seldom acclaim or follow individuals. 
They respect ability and they trust one whom they have 
long known as honest and courageous, but enthusiasm and 
hero-worship seem foreign to their natures. The national 
heroes are far back in the past. No statesman has ever 
created a party called by his name. No Pitt, no Gladstone, 
no Gambetta, no Deak, no Jefferson or Clay or O'Connell 
or Parnell. 

Sixthly. — That " sporting instinct," as one may call it, 
which in the English-speaking peoples stirs the members of 
a party to fight for it because it is theirs and they want it 
to win, the same instinct which goes to wild lengths in base- 
ball matches or athletic competitions, is faint among the 
Swiss. Politics are a serious matter, a business matter, not 
a game. 

Seventhly. — The prizes which public life offers to the 
individual member of a party are few and hardly worth 
striving for. Public service has not the attraction of social 
importance which counts for much in France, nor the pecu- 
niary rewards that dangle before American politicians of 
the lower type. 

Eighthly. — The graver questions of policy are settled in 
the last resort by popular vote, so that the dominance- of any 
one party in the Legislature or in the Executive Council 
(be it in the Confederation or in a canton) is a secondary 
matter, and can but rarely involve any great benefit or harm 
to the country. 

Ninthly. — For two generations one party commanded so 
decided a majority in the Confederation that the other par- 
ties, instead of trying to dethrone it, confined themselves 
to resisting such of its particular measures as they disliked. 
As it seldom provoked them by abusing its strength — for 



chap, xxx POLITICS NOT A PKOFESSION 425 

this would have endangered its own position — their re- 
sistance was conducted with moderation. 

Lastly. — Patriotism, a patriotism which puts the inter- 
est of the nation above all domestic differences, holds all the 
Swiss together. In Britain and America, as well as in 
Australia and New Zealand, there were during last cen- 
tury no foreign neighbours to fear, so party spirit could 
disport itself freely. Here the pressure of four great mili- 
tary Powers keeps compact a people composed of the most 
diverse elements. 

Taken together, these considerations explain why party 
feeling, which in some democracies can swell to a raging 
torrent, has in Switzerland been since 1848 no more than a 
rippling brook. 



Absence of "Professional Politicians" 

That the absence of acute partisanship in the legislative 
and executive authorities should make the daily movement 
of legislation and administration steadier and smoother than 
in countries where it is the function of a parliamentary 
Opposition to criticize and arraign, sometimes even to ob- 
struct, the action of the ministry, — this is a natural and 
obvious result over which a people may rejoice. But in 
Switzerland it shows another result, which distinguishes it 
from Prance and from some English-speaking countries. 
In no other democracy (except perhaps Norway) is there so 
small a class of professional politicians. Hardly any per- 
sons are occupied in working the non-official political ma- 
chinery. The class who in Britain are called " political 
agents/' employed either by party organizations, central or 
local, or by sitting members, or by prospective candidates — 
a class which, though still small, has increased in recent 
years — is scarcely noticeable. In the United States there 
exists a vastly larger class which busies itself not only with 
the manufacture of public opinion, but with the forming 
and working of local committees and the selection of party 
candidates for all elective offices, and the conduct of elec- 
tions, National, State, and Municipal. Neither is that 
class to be found in Switzerland, although the number of 
cantonal and communal offices which lie in the direct gift 



426 SWITZERLAND PART n 

of the people is large in proportion to the population. Two 
facts already mentioned account for the difference. In 
Switzerland the offices are not greatly sought for vacancies 
are few, owing to the practice of re-election, and the average 
voter is but slightly influenced in his choice by the coin- 
cidence of a candidate's politics with his own. Even in 
elections to the legislature he regards personal merit as well 
as party profession, for in small areas such merit can be 
known and judged. Thus one may say that in Switzerland 
there are few " politicians " in the American, French, and 
English sense of the word, except the members of the legis- 
lative bodies, Federal and Cantonal. 



Character of the Members of Legislature 

How stands it, then, with these members? Is politics 
for them a career? From what classes and occupations do 
they come? How do they commend themselves to the elec- 
tors? What standard of intelligence, knowledge, and up- 
rightness do they reach ? 

As political life is not in the pecuniary sense a profes- 
sion, so too it is hardly a career. There is practically noth- 
ing to be gained from a seat in the Legislature, for a man 
of the average member's talents would earn more in a pro- 
fession. The Federal offices which it gives a prospect of 
obtaining are few in the Confederation, being virtually con- 
fined to places in the Executive Council and in the Federal 
Tribunal. Though these posts are legally held only for 
three years and six years respectively, the habit of re-elec- 
tion makes vacancies so few that the chance for any given 
member is scarcely worth regarding. Nobody, therefore, 
embarks in politics as a lucrative calling. Wliat able man 
would enter a legislature for the sake of twenty shillings a 
day during sixteen weeks in the year? In the cantons the 
phenomena are fairly similar, though in some there are 
more opportunities than the National Government offers for 
using a seat in the Legislature for personal advancement. 
A lawyer may increase his practice either by showing his 
talents for speaking or by becoming a person of some local 
importance; a business man may improve his standing in 
the business world; and there are posts which, though 



chap, xxx CHAEACTEK OF LEGISLATOKS 427 

scantily remunerated, may be worth having when other 
plans break down or other careers are closed. It remains 
true, however, that politics, by itself, is not an avocation. 
Practically every legislator has his own business or profes- 
sion, and lives by it. The motives which lead him into pub- 
lic life are much the same as those one finds in England. 
There is an interest in public questions, and a desire to serve 
the causes he cares for: there is an ambition, which the 
sternest moralist will hardly condemn, to make effective 
such abilities as he possesses and win distinction by them: 
there is the longing for some sort of power, and among 
some few there is the hope of turning a public position to 
account in the world of business or, more frequently, in 
winning social estimation, for in Switzerland the position 
of a deputy, though carrying no sort of rank, witnesses to 
the respect which fellow-citizens have accorded, seeing that 
the Assembly has always stood high in the esteem of the 
people. 

All classes are represented in it, but the large majority 
are well-educated men, about half of them lawyers or can- 
tonal officials who have received some legal training. The 
old nobility, such as the Junkers of Bern, do not offer 
themselves, and might not be returned if they did, either in 
the cities which they ruled as a patrician oligarchy, almost 
till within living memory, or in most of the rural areas. 
But in some few cantons, such as Uri and Schwytz and 
Grisons, the ancient noble families who have been asso- 
ciated with the history of the canton for four or five cen- 
turies continue to enjoy great respect, sometimes even polit- 
ical influence, and their descendants are still chosen to fill 
the highest cantonal posts or returned as members to one 
or other Federal House. Broadly speaking, though wealth 
may sometimes aid a candidate and rank may sometimes ex- 
pose him to suspicion, neither makes much difference. A 
man is elected on the strength of his local standing, his 
character, and his capacity. Nowhere in Europe, except 
perhaps in Norway, where there was never any ennobled 
class, and in Bulgaria and Serbia, where, while the Turk 
still ruled, everybody was a peasant without civil rights, 
is social equality so complete as in Switzerland, complete 
enough to need no asserting. In cities the families of 



428 SWITZERLAND pabt ii 

ancient lineage cherish their traditions in silence, and the 
newer well-born families of mercantile origin have also a 
certain pride of ancestry, but both (speaking broadly) 
stand apart from public life. These excepted, the members 
come from all classes, though in the National Assembly 
there were, till the Socialists arose, no working-men, and 
hardly any peasants. Rich men do not eschew politics, as 
in Australia, or find that difficulty in getting a seat which 
is experienced in America, but they are usually too much 
occupied by their business as manufacturers or hotel pro- 
prietors to give attendance in Bern while the Assembly is in 
session. The large majority are men of moderate means 
and simple life, fair specimens of the upper middle class 
of the nation, with its characteristic shrewd sense and plain 
way of living. The Assembly is equal in knowledge and 
capacity to the French and English legislatures, though 
without the oratorical brilliance of the former. 

Both in the Confederation and in the cantons members 
are respected and trusted. Imputations of corruption or 
of the grosser forms of jobbery have been rare, and convic- 
tions still more rare, except perhaps in two or three can- 
tons, which it would be invidious to name. The term " pol- 
itician," though a Bernese Junker might use it with the 
sort of scorn for a parvenu which the patrician Catilina 
showed for Cicero, 1 carries no faint tinge of such suspicion 
as it awakens in France and in some States of the American 
Union. This holds true of the official class also, including 
the judges of the upper courts. If a man has been proved 
to be dishonest, his public career comes to a perpetual end. 

The so-called " tone of public life " is best conveyed by 
comparing it with that of other countries. When the vis- 
itor enters the halls in which the Federal Assembly meets, 
and watches the proceedings and talks with the statesmen, 
he notes the absence of that air of pomp and ceremony 
which custom and tradition have preserved in France and 
England and Hungary. Few forms are observed: little 
appears of the dignity with which the historic greatness of 
a country invests the men who guide its destinies, whatever 
their personal worth. All is plain almost to bareness. As 
in earlier centuries the courtiers and diplomatists of France 
i " Civis inquilinus urbis Romae " (according to Sallust). 






chap, xxx TONE OF PUBLIC LIFE 429 

and Austria disparaged the republican manners of Holland 
and Switzerland, so one notes a blunt homeliness and want 
of external polish which censorious tongues would call 
roughness. But there is less acridity, less unfairness in 
controversy, less of wounding insinuation than in the 
Chambers of France, less commonness and rudeness, some- 
times descending to vulgarity, than in those of America and 
Australia. One feels in Switzerland the presence, along 
with a sort of rustic simplicity, of a natural rough-hewn 
dignity, the product of a long tradition of national inde- 
pendence and individual freedom, and rooted in a sense of 
equality which respects itself without disparaging others. 
The observer finds nothing in the proceedings or externals 
of the Swiss Chambers to touch his imagination, as the im- 
agination of American students is touched by features of 
the British Parliament so familiar to the Englishman that 
he fails to mark them. But the visitor's judgment is im- 
pressed. He sees solid thoughtful men, with strong- and 
cool heads, trying to do their best for the country which is 
the first love of their hearts. There is an atmosphere of 
reciprocal respect. Representatives do not inveigh against 
their colleagues. They trust the Federal Councillors. The 
people trust both. Taking the country as a whole, the tone 
of public life in the Confederation, in most of the can- 
tons, and in the communes, is healthier than what one finds 
in France, Italy, or Brazil, or many States of the American 
Union, and provinces of Canada, and not inferior to that 
of Britain, of Australia and New Zealand, of Holland, Nor- 
way, and Chile. 

If this be so — for a stranger fears to dogmatize on a 
subject to which even the inhabitants find it hard to apply 
positive tests — the soundness of Swiss public life is, as 
must always be the case, mainly due to the vigilance of pub- 
lic opinion. 



CHAPTER XXXI 



PUBLIC OPINION 



The public opinion of a people is the expression (as ap- 
plied to politics) of the intelligence and taste, the temper 
and the moral feelings of the individual citizens. In try- 
ing to understand Swiss opinion we must therefore begin 
from the Swiss citizen. 

How are we to form any general estimate of character 
of a nation composed of very different elements ? Race 
differences go deep: we see that in Spain. Religious dif- 
ferences go even deeper: we see that in France, where they 
divide the stream of opinion at its source. Nevertheless in 
countries where racial distinctions are so marked as in 
Great Britain, and even in a vast country like the United 
States, in the northern, southern, and western parts of 
which men live under widely diverse economic conditions, 
there may be a general and pervasive opinion which ex- 
presses the national thought and purpose, creating out of 
the various elements that temper one another a real and 
fruitful unity. This is the case in Switzerland. The ma- 
jority of the people are of Teutonic stock, the minority of 
Celtic or Italic. There is a Protestant majority and a 
Roman Catholic minority, with the recollection of an acute 
conflict only seventy years behind. Yet religious antag- 
onisms have softened, and racial differences cause no 
enmity, but may even seem to give a greater variety and 
breadth to the character of the people. The Allemanic or 
German-speaking part of the population has a steady and 
persistent German thoroughness, with rather less senti- 
mentality and certainly more independence than character- 
ize the typical Middle German, as, for instance, the Rhine- 
lander or Thuringian or Saxon. The French-speaking pop- 
ulation has a Burgundian strain, which gives it less mobility 

430 



chap, xxxi PUBLIC OPINION 431 



and vivacity than one finds in natives of Southern and West 
Central France. Still, though the contrast between the 
French-speakers of Yaud and Geneva and the German- 
speakers of Zurich and Luzern is less marked than is the 
unlikeness of the German of Cologne to the Frenchman of 
Lyons, a certain contrast remains. In turning from a jour- 
nal of a German city like Basle to a journal of Lausanne 
one perceives a difference deeper than that of language, a 
difference in mental habits and attitude. 1 Each element 
does of course modify the other, but apparently less by 
personal contact than through and by literature. This was 
to be expected. What is more remarkable is that the new 
cantons, French and Italian, have appropriated the histor- 
ical traditions of the original cantons, which were all Ger- 
manic. The children of those who two centuries ago were 
held as subjects have inherited the glories of those who 
ruled their forefathers. This is a fruit of Liberty and 
Equality. 

Let us see now what all Swiss have in common, whether 
through the influence of history, institutions, and literature, 
or from any other source. 2 

They are all alike imbued with the spirit of liberty, not 
only in the sense of civil, religious, and political liberty, but 
in the sense also of individual independence. The peasant 
or workman stands on his own feet and goes his own way. 
He may be led, but he will not be driven. He has also 
learnt the two first lessons freedom ought to teach, respect 
for the rights of others and the correlation of Duties with 
Rights. Thus he is generally tolerant of opposition, not 
hurried into violence, open to argument, ready to consider 
a compromise. Nowhere so fully as here (except perhaps 
in the United States) has what may be called the fusing 
power of free institutions shown itself so powerful. Di- 
verse as are the human beings in other respects, they have 
been, for the purposes of politics, melted together in one 
crucible and run into one mould. 

i The German-speakers are said to be more prone to accept govern- 
mental direction, and to favour the extension of state functions than 
are the inhabitants of "Suisse romande," who dislike " reglementa- 
tion." 

2 1 speak only of the native Swiss, not including the recent immi- 
grants, mostly still unassimilated. 



432 SWITZERLAND PA bt n 

Another spirit common to both sections of the nation is 
the spirit of rural conservatism. A large majority of the 
French-speakers, a considerable though diminishing major- 
ity of the German-speakers, live by agriculture or by pas- 
toral pursuits. The habits of such a life, secluded and 
touched by few new ideas, make men averse to change, and 
resentful of any attempt to hustle them. This quality, com- 
bined with the tolerance already referred to, produces a 
cautious moderation of temper which would be stolid if it 
were stupid. The Swiss peasant, however, though less in- 
tellectually alert than the Italian, is slow rather than 
stupid. His views may be narrow, like the valley whose 
steep sides pen him in. But he can think, though it may 
take some time to set his thoughts going in the direction 
desired. Alpine climbers, British and American, have 
often noted the intelligence of their guides, sometimes well- 
read men, from whom one can learn much in conversation. 

That taste and capacity for local self-government which 
began with the old rural cantons has passed into the whole 
nation, strengthening independence, intelligence, and the 
sense of civic duty. They have formed the habit of judg- 
ing everything upon its merits, and this has contributed 
to reduce the influence exerted by individual leaders. 
Though it has produced some remarkable statesmen, the his- 
tory of the country is the history of the people, not of its 
foremost figures, and could not be written in a series of 
biographies, as one might write the history of England or 
Scotland or France. No single man since Zwingli has 
exerted any decisive influence on the fortunes of the nation 
or become a great European figure. Geneva was not in 
Calvin's time, nor in Rousseau's, a member of the Confed- 
eration, though in close relations with it. No one has been 
even so much of a hero as Ferdinand Lassalle was to the 
German Socialists forty years ago. This feature of Swiss 
character, taken along with its coolness and comparative in- 
sensibility to rhetoric, makes the country no good field for 
the demagogue. A few such have occasionally figured in 
Cantonal, but none in Federal politics. They would be 
discounted. If sweeping economic changes come, it will be 
by appeals made to self-interested cupidity or to the doc- 



chap, xxxi PUBLIC OPINION 433 

trine of human equality in its extreme form, not through 
any personal fascination or oratorical arts that may be used 
to recommend them. 

Social Equality has been long established, and , the at- 
tachment to it has become a part of national character. It 
is, as already observed, compatible with a respect for an- 
cient lineage, and does not make the peasant or workman 
aggressively hostile to the richer class, as the latter is in « 
Trance to the so-called " bourgeois." There is neither sub- 
serviency nor self-assertion: each man is taken for what he 
is worth, not in money, but as a citizen. Life is plain and 
frugal in all classes. The ostentatious luxury of the rich 
foreigners who flaunt themselves at Luzern or Zurich would 
be censured in a native Swiss. 

How, then, does Social Equality affect the relations of 
the people to the politician? Does he play down to them 
by an affection of rustic simplicity, as often happens in 
the United States ? Do they distrust him if he is better off 
or better educated? Do the compliments paid to the 
" practical common-sense " and " great heart " of the peo- 
ple, usual in all democratic countries, give them a conceit of 
their universal competence and extinguish any deference 
to special knowledge or long experience? 

There is something of all this, but less than might be 
expected in a country so pervaded by the spirit of equality, 
for the practice of self-government seems to have worked to 
temper the theory of popular sovereignty. The citizen has 
so long been accustomed to the former that the strong wine 
of the latter does not go to his head. He has perhaps too 
little sense of the value of technical knowledge, especially 
when he is asked to pay for it, does not realize the intricacy 
of modern economic problems, cares little for shining qual- 
ities and might resent any assumption of superior capacity. 
But he knows the worth of good men, desires his commu- 
nity to retain their services, respects the opinion of those 
who impress him as honest and thoughtful. A Swiss pro- 
fessor x once told me that having delivered an address in a 
village on some current question that was to come before 

i Dr. Karl Hilty, one of the sagest as well as one of the most lovable 
Swiss I have ever known. He died in 1908. 

VOL. I 2 F 



434 SWITZERLAND PA bt ii 

the people for their decision, an old farmer came up to him 
after it was over and said, " Don't suppose that we agricul- 
turists think poorly of you learned men. We like to see 
you and to hear you: you have things to tell us we don't 
know." 

All classes are less prone to he moved hy abstract ideas 
than either the French or the Germans. Though Rous- 
seau was a Genevese, his doctrines were making more im- 
pression in France, and even in North America, than his 
own city, till its government, with genuinely oligarchic 
folly, ordered the Contrat Social to be publicly burnt. In 
the first years of the French Revolution Geneva saw a popu- 
lar outburst, which overwhelmed the aristocracy and spread 
into West Switzerland. But this was due rather to the 
contagion of France than to Rousseau's teaching; nor has 
any subsequent dissemination of ideas ever lit such a blaze. 
The Socialism of German-speaking Switzerland is compara- 
tively recent and due to the Marxian propaganda from Ger- 
many, strengthened by the immigration of German work- 
ing-men, most of whom, however, have not become citizens. 
A like immigration from France and Italy has had a simi- 
lar, though less marked, effect in the western cantons. 
More prudent than the Americans, the Swiss are chary in 
admitting aliens to full civic rights. 1 They are, moreover, 
not of a speculative turn of mind. They have produced 
great mathematicians like Euler, great moralists and critics 
like Vinet, but no first-rate metaphysicians or political phi- 
losophers. Nevertheless the dogma of popular sovereignty, 
coinciding with the love of equality and the practice of local 
self-government, has counted for more in recommending the 
Referendum and Initiative than have any actual grievances 
those institutions might have served to abate. 

As the habit of following public affairs with personal 
interest is more widely diffused in Switzerland than in 
other European countries, so it seems probable that they 
fill a larger space than they do elsewhere in the mind of the 
average citizen. This is partly due to the small size of 
governmental areas, the Commune, the Canton, the Con- 

i To be a citizen, one must be admitted to a commune, and though 
poor communes welcome rich applicants, all communes are careful not 
to burden themselves with those whom they might have to support. 



ohap. xxxi PUBLIC OPINION 435 

federation itself, but something may be attributed to the 
comparative absence of sources of interest present in other 
countries. Commerce, manufactures, finance have been on 
a small scale, except in a very few urban centres. Athletic 
sports do not occupy the thoughts of the youth as in Eng- 
land and America. Competitions in rifle-shooting rouse 
some interest, but this, from its connection with the army, 
is a form of patriotism. Among the richer people there 
are hardly any devoted, like so many Englishmen, to some 
form of " sport," hunting, shooting, horse-racing ; nor has 
amusement become a passion among the less affluent. Life, 
though it grows more strenuous, is more sedate, and the 
eagerness for new sensations less acute, than in the cities 
of France, Germany, or America. Even gaiety takes quiet 
forms. There is some leisure for thinking, and some per- 
ception of the relative importance of public duty and pri- 
vate self-indulgence. 

Let us see how far these features of national life and 
character tinge, or are reflected in, the opinions of the people 
on political subjects. 

They are averse both to centralization and to State so- 
cialism, yet willing to take a step in either direction when 
a tangible and tolerably certain benefit is set before them. 
Cantonalist feeling seems almost as strong as State feeling 
was in the United States before the Civil War, and rather 
stronger than it is there now. 

They are parsimonious, unlike in this respect to all other 
democracies, except those of the two South African Repub- 
lics in their days of independence. Life has been hard for 
the peasant, his income small, his taxes, light as they are, 
an appreciable part of his expenditure. Proposals which 
could raise taxation are prima facie repellent, except to 
those Socialists who regard progressive taxation as a step 
towards communism. Religious partisanship exists, but in 
a mild form, milder than in any other country (except 
Hungary) where there is a strong minority of one faith op- 
posed to a majority of another. Protestant hatred of the 
Jesuits and fear of other religious orders is a dislike of 
what may become a political power working in secret, rather 
than an expression of intolerance. Nevertheless the in- 
stance of the Initiative vote against the Jews in 1893 (see 



436 SWITZERLAND 



PART II 



above, p. 403) shows that it is possible to arouse and play 
upon religious or racial prejudices. 

The humanitarian sentiment characteristic of modern de- 
mocracies led to the abolition of capital punishment by the 
Constitution of 1874, but was not strong enough to prevent 
the Constitution from being so amended as to permit a can- 
ton to restore that penalty, some shocking cases of murder 
having induced a reconsideration of the subject. Few can- 
tons, however, have availed themselves of the permission. 
The tolerant spirit of " Live and let live " is exemplified in 
the scantiness of compulsive legislation, even as regards in- 
toxicating spirits, though there exists a strong temperance 
party. One discovers no signs of that Tyranny of the Ma- 
jority which Tocqueville discovered in America and which 
J. S. Mill feared as a probable feature of democracy every- 
where. On the other hand, there is a willingness, surpris- 
ing to English observers, to allow to the Executive, for the 
maintenance of public order and for dealing with suspected 
offenders, larger powers than English practice has shown 
to be sufficient. 

In judging public men — and this is, after all, the most 
important of all the functions public opinion has to exer- 
cise — the Swiss are shrewd and on the whole fair and just. 
Confidence is not lightly given nor lightly withdrawn. 
The qualities most valued are those which characterize the 
nation — balance, caution, and firmness, coupled of course 
with integrity. The judgments which the people render are 
moral rather than sentimental. Newspaper criticism of 
leading politicians can be stringent, but it is more tem- 
perate than in any other democratic country, except per- 
haps Holland and Norway. 

Here let the meed of praise be noted which foreign ob- 
servers agree in bestowing on the Swiss press. It is well 
conducted, intelligent, tarnished neither by blackmailing 
nor by personal virulence. Four of the chief dailies, two 
published in French, two in German, are among the best 
in Europe. They do much to guide opinion and to sustain 
the level of political thinking. All classes read. In no 
European country are there so many journals in proportion 
to the population. No single paper, however, seems to ex- 



chap, xxxi PUBLIC OPINION 437 

ercise a political power such as some have done in Aus- 
tralia and as several now do in Argentina and Brazil. Some 
are keenly partisan, but none seems to be owned by, or de- 
voted to the interests of, any particular statesman. 

How far, then, for this is the point of moment, are we to 
say that public opinion governs Switzerland, and what re- 
lation does it bear to that method of direct legislation at 
the polls in which the popular will finds its most direct 
expression ? 

It might be unsafe to treat a vote on a Referendum or 
Initiative as exactly reflecting the popular mind, for, al- 
though it gives a better means of judging opinion than is 
found elsewhere in Europe, one must always allow for the 
influence of party, which can compress into a definite chan- 
nel the wandering waters of half-formed notions and im- 
pressions. Many people can be made to vote, even in 
Switzerland, who do not contribute to the real opinion of 
the nation. When a conservatively minded peasant votes 
" No," he may mean only that he is not yet prepared to say 
" Yes." Views embodied in votes tell us less than we de- 
sire to know as to the trend of thought, but views publicly 
expressed have the effect which belongs either to the au- 
thority of the person they proceed from or to the intensity 
of conviction which will fight to make them prevail. Thus 
there are times when a skilled observer can discover that an 
opinion is already or may soon be dominant, though it does 
not secure a majority at the polls. It is nevertheless true 
that the Referendum comes nearer than any other plan yet 
invented to a method of measuring the public opinion of the 
moment, for it helps the statesman to discern what is pass- 
ing in the popular mind. It supplies sailing directions by 
which he may shape his course, warns him off submerged 
shoals, indicates better than an election how far the educa- 
tion of the public mind upon a given subject has progressed. 

The popular vote by which the people in May 1920 ac- 
cepted the proposal of the Legislature that Switzerland 
should enter the League of Nations excited an unprece- 
dentedly and thoroughgoing keen discussion all over the 
country, and the voting upon it was the largest ever known, 
exceeding in six cantons 80 per cent of the qualified 



438 SWITZERLAND part ii 

citizens. 1 Both the earnestness with which the people ap- 
proached their duty and the result of their thought on the 
subject were of good omen. 

i A Swiss friend wrote to me during the progress of this contest : 
" Le pacte de la Soctete" des Nations est distribue a tous les citoyens 
avec diverses annexes. Les articles de journaux, les conferences se 
multiplient. Dans la moindre auberge on entend des discussions 
acharnees sur tel ou tel article que des citoyens tout a fait simples 
savent par coeur tout comme ils connaissent et invoquent les comnien- 
taires qu'en ont donne les plus grand juristes. J'ai 6te interpelle" dans 
la rue par des citoyens modestes qui tiraient de leur poche leur exem- 
plaire du pacte tout crayonne" des remarques et qui exigaient des ex- 
plications detaillees sur tel ou tel article." The debates and the vot- 
ing were an aid to political education such as no other European coun- 
try has seen, and when the proposal, which was opposed by the 
Socialists and by the great bulk of the Conservatives in the German- 
speaking cantons, was carried by a majority of 414,000 to 322,000, the 
decision was at once accepted with a good grace by the minority. 



CHAPTER XXXII 

CONCLUDING KEFLECTIONS ON SWISS POLITICAL 
INSTITUTIONS 

The interest of a general survey of Swiss institutions in 
their constitutional framework and in actual operation con- 
sists not only in the unlikeness of these institutions to those 
of other modern States, but also in the fact that their daily 
working has produced results that could not have been pre- 
dicted from their form. This has been due to two causes. 
One is the growth of usages which have essentially affected 
and come to govern that daily working. The other is the 
comparatively small influence exerted by the power of polit- 
ical party. 

Both of these are visible in the Swiss habit of handling 
their Constitution. That instrument is less precise in its 
distribution of powers between the National Government 
and the Cantonal Governments than are the Constitutions 
of other Federal States. It grants concurrent powers over 
many branches of legislation, and it permits the National 
Government to disallow cantonal laws. Controversies may 
be raised regarding doubtful points of interpretation which 
in most Federal countries would give rise to friction. In 
America they would be brought before the Judiciary, there 
an independent power, which can by judgment raise issues 
susceptible of final determination only by an amendment of 
the Constitution. In Switzerland, however, comparatively 
little trouble has arisen. The Legislature endeavours to 
adjust matters, keeping as much as possible in general ac- 
cord with the provisions of the Constitution, where these are 
clear, yet in such wise as to mollify the canton concerned 
or the interest affected, and find a solution which will work 
smoothly all round. Thus a laxity which Americans or 
Australians would not put up with gives little trouble in 
Switzerland, and a deviation from the sound principle that 

439 



440 SWITZERLAND PA rt n 

no legislature should be allowed to be the judge of the con- 
stitutionality of its own action becomes harmless, because 
every one knows that the Assembly would not abuse a power 
whose misuse could be promptly corrected by the people. 

The frame of National Government creates a Legislature 
with a term of only three years, and an Executive of seven 
persons chosen by that Legislature with the same term. 
These executive officials have not, like the British Cabinet, 
the advantage of being members of the Legislature, though 
they can address it. Such a scheme would seem calculated 
to produce constant changes in men and in policy, as well 
as to weaken the authority of a Ministry short-lived and 
dependent on a short-lived Legislature. But neither of 
these things has happened. Owiug to the habit of re-elec- 
tion, the Federal Council stands practically unchanged from 
one three-year period to another. So, too, the composition 
of the Legislature itself has hitherto changed little. It is in 
close and friendly touch with the Executive, profiting by 
the latter's counsel and administrative experience, leaving 
minor affairs to it, but in large matters directing its course 
and taking responsibility for the conduct of business, while 
within the Federal Council custom has established the rule 
that each of its members accepts the decision of the major- 
ity, or, if the matter has gone to the Assembly, the decision 
of that body. Because it is not a party body, this Federal 
Executive of seven is a virtually permanent Cabinet, and the 
nation gains by retaining the services of its most experi- 
enced administrators, though it is perhaps too apt to shift 
them from one department to another. These benefits are 
due to a practice or convention not embodied in any pro- 
vision of the Constitution, but formed by usage, and com- 
mended by the results. It is an interesting illustration of 
the extent to which the legal provisions of a Constitution are 
modified in their working by what Professor Dicey 1 has 
called the " Conventions of a Constitution," usages which 
are worked by a sort of understanding arrived at between 
politicians and so well settled by practice as to become vir- 
tually, though not legally, imperative. Such " understand- 
ings " generally grow up in oligarchical rather than in demo- 
cratic Governments. It was largely by them that the < x 
i The Law of the Constitution. 



chap, xxxn THE CONFEDERATION 441 

tremely complicated constitution of the Roman Republic, 
in its legal aspect a mass of apparent contradictions, was 
worked. It was by them, as they were formed under the 
oligarchic regime of the eighteenth century, that the British 
Constitution was, and is to some extent still worked. Such 
conventions fare well so long as their moral authority lasts, 
but in the long-run break down when unduly strained. 
They broke down at Rome because ambitious leaders, in a 
period which was becoming revolutionary, disregarded them, 
and having military force at their command pushed to an 
extreme the powers which the letter of the law gave to a 
magistrate. They have largely lost their force in England, 
because parties in the Legislature, under the influence of 
passion, have disregarded them and have exerted to the full 
the powers which majorities in a ruling legislature possess. 
Switzerland is a remarkable instance of a government in 
which they grew up after it had become democratic, for 
though there were doubtless plenty of such non-legal usages 
among the oligarchies in cities like Bern and Zurich before 
1848, the new Constitution did not take them over, as the 
purchaser of a business takes it over as " a going concern." 
It was the Liberal statesmen of 1848 who created them for 
their own use. 1 The absence in Switzerland of the friction 
between the Houses of the Legislature, so common in two- 
Chambered Governments, is, however, due not to conven- 
tions or understandings but chiefly to the fact that for many 
years the same party held a majority in both Houses, the 
members of both being, moreover, drawn from the same 
class, elected, either directly or indirectly, by manhood suf- 
frage, and neither House having any special interests, eco- 
nomic or ecclesiastical, to defend. Their differences are 
only such as naturally arise between any two bodies of men 
debating apart, though holding opinions and guided by mo- 
tives substantially the same. 

What has been said of the Confederation seems generally 
true of the cantonal governments also. There is less 
smoothness in the working of the latter, because in few has 

i Something similar happened in the United States during the first 
half-century of the Constitution. Convenience established, among the 
then small number of leading men in Congress, usages many of which 
have held their ground (see the author's American Commonicealth, 
vol. i. chap, xxxiv. ) . 



442 SWITZERLAND pabt ii 

any one party a permanent majority in the legislative Great 
Council, and because in some cantons the Executive Council 
is chosen not by the Legislature but directly by the people. 
Nevertheless, as party oscillations are seldom sudden or 
violent, and as those executives which are chosen by the 
people are usually chosen at the same time as the legisla- 
tures, these two authorities get on well together. In the 
cantons, as in the Confederation, the suspicion that power 
may be abused has prescribed the assignment of all busi- 
ness to Boards. 1 Xowhere is there what Americans call a 
" One Man Power," not because the Swiss, like the Greek 
republics, dreaded a possible Tyrant, but because they love 
equality, and have not been compelled to secure responsi- 
bility to the people by fixing it upon a single man who can 
be held to strict account more easily than can a Board. 2 
In these small communities representatives and officials all 
stand near the people and work under the people's eve. 
Public opinion controls everybody. The Legislature, more- 
over, though legally the centre of all power, is thought not 
to need those constitutional checks which the American con- 
stitutions impose, because its action can he reversed by the 
Referendum or superseded by the Initiative. Thus the sys- 
tem of government by Executive Councils in touch with 
Legislative Councils has worked well. The people are, at 
any rate, contented. Some changes have indeed been pro- 
posed. There are those who would assimilate the Federal 
system to that of the more democratic cantons by transfer- 
ring the election of the (Executive) Federal Council from 
the Assembly to the people, a change which while it would 
on the one hand give more of independent power to the 
Council, might on the other make it, under the plan of pro- 
portional representation, unable to work as effectively as 
heretofore. Others again would make the Referendum ap- 
plicable to all cantonal laws in every canton, and would ex- 

*A similar feeling operated at Athens (see above, Chapter XVI.). 
There are similarities between the Greek republics, at their best, and 
Switzerland, just as there are also similarities between them, at their 
worst, and the more backward of the Spanish-American republics. 

2 Perhaps also because in mediaeval Switzerland there was never 
any monarch nearer than the Emperor, so that no monarchical tradi- 
tion was formed which in other countries made a single Head of the 
State, however limited his powers, seem a natural apex of the govern- 
mental edifice. 



chap, xxxii MEKITS OF THE GOVERNMENT 443 

tend the application of the Initiative in the Confederation 
to laws as well as to Constitutional amendments. Some for- 
eign observers, weary of the perpetual strife which troubles 
their own politics, will be disposed to ask : " Why try fur- 
ther experiments merely for the sake of giving fuller ex- 
tension to direct popular sovereignty, considering how wide 
are the powers the people already exercise? Why disturb 
a system which has worked usefully, with an absence of fric- 
tion which other countries admire? Might not a warning 
from the oracle which bade the people of Camarina leave 
well alone be sometimes serviceable ? " 

The merits which such observers discover in the govern- 
ment of Switzerland as compared with other full-fledged de- 
mocracies, ancient and modern, may be stated as follows : 

It3 stability, remarkable in the Confederation, not so 
complete, yet pretty general, in the cantons also. 

The consistency with which its policy has been directed 
to the same broad aims. 

The quality of the legislation it produces, steadily pro- 
gressive in the Confederation, more irregular, but on the 
whole sound and useful, in the cantons also, and in both, be 
it more or less progressive, a genuine expression of the 
popular will. 

An administration, economical beyond all comparison, 
and generally efficient. 1 The economy is a part of the ef- 
ficiency, for the close scrutiny of expenditure induces care 
to see that money's worth is got for money spent. 

Ample provision is made, except in a very few cantons, 
for all branches of Education. 

Public works are not neglected. The roads are excellent, 
considering the difficulties of a mountainous country, liable 
to landslips and to floods from melting snows. Order is 
well preserved. Justice is honestly, and above all cheaply, 
administered, though with less technical perfection than in 
some other countries. 

Municipal government is pure and usually efficient. 

Adequate provision is made for national defence, and the 
citizens recognize their duty to render personal service in 
arms. 

i Except in so far as small salaries fail to secure high special com- 
petence in officials. 



444 SWITZERLAND part ii 

The liberty of the individual is respected. The tone of 
public life is maintained at a high standard, and politics 
is not tainted by corruption. The strong sense of civic duty 
is seen in the large amount of unpaid public service ren- 
dered in cantons and communes. 

To these let us add certain other points in which Switzer- 
land is to be commended, and which, though not directly at- 
tributable to the form of its government, have at any rate 
grown up and thriven under that government. 

Social as well as civil equality exists, and is accompanied 
by good feeling between the richer and the poorer. No- 
where is the sense of national unity stronger. 

There are no marked inequalities in wealth, and wealth, 
per se, is not an object of hatred. Its power is less felt 
in legislation than in any other modern country except 
Norway. 

There has been for seventy years little party passion and 
little religious bitterness. 

There are no professional politicians, and comparatively 
few local demagogs 

Rings, Bosses, Caucuses are rarely discernible, and where 

visible, just sufficiently se to make their rarity noteworthy. 

Except in (me political group, growing, but not yet large, 

contentment, reigns. Contentment is not always a good sign, 
for it may be a mark of apathy, indicating that men have 

not awakened to the possibility of bettering their conditions 

and developing their faculties. But DO one can call the 
Swiss apathetic. 
The lasl preceding pages have embodied the impressions 

formed during a rait to Switzerland in L905. When I re- 
visited the country in L919 shadows from passing clouds 
were beginning to fall upon parts of the landscape. Apart 

from the shock which there, as elsewhere, had been given 
hy the Great War tO hopes of the peaceful progress of the 
world, the Swiss were realizing their especial dangers from 
powerful military neighbour states, from the influx of im- 
migrants who were strangers to their own traditions, from 
the rise of prices, from labour troubles — a formidable gen- 
eral Strike having been only JUS1 averted by the energetic 
promptitude of the Government — from the contagion of 
poisonous foreign influences, from a load of debt incurred 



chap, xxxn GENERAL REFLECTIONS 445 

during the war, from defects in the governmental handling 
of economic and administrative problems the war had raised. 
Cautious persons were alarmed by the spread of commu- 
nistic doctrines, as well as by the tendency to centralization, 
and by an extension of bureaucracy which seemed to threaten 
cantonal rights and local self-government. Some, while ad- 
mitting the force of the arguments for proportional repre- 
sentation, feared that it might enfeeble government by 
breaking up the legislature into groups, and might make it 
difficult for the Federal Council to maintain the harmony 
and general continuity of policy which had proved valuable 
in the past. Nevertheless there was among thoughtful men 
more cheerfulness than one could find in 1019 in any other 
European country. Faith in the good sense and good tem- 
per of the people, and in the patriotism which gave unity 
to them, made them believe that whatever troubles might be 
in store, patriotism and good sense would deliver Switzer- 
land out of all the troubles that might await her, as they had 
often saved her before. The visitor was reminded of the 
persistent optimism of the Americans. Optimism has some- 
times lulled democracies into a false security; yet a people's 
faith in itself may be a well-spring of vital energy. 

Against these advantages which the country enjoy, what 
defects are we to set on the other side of the balance-sheet ? 
Perfection is not to be expected in any government, how- 
ever popular, nor does one find the Swiss claiming it for 
their own. They admit that the doctrine of equality is 
pushed too far in disregarding the value of special knowl- 
edge and skill in officials. Some think that in certain can- 
tons the rich are overtaxed, and indeed so overtaxed as to 
drive wealth, or the industries which capital is needed to 
maintain, out of the canton. 1 Others regret the existence 
of petty political cliques with selfish aims, of the habit of 
place-hunting, of local jobbery in the giving out of contracts, 
and abusing, for some personal end, the position a man 
holds in a Cantonal Council or as a Cantonal official. Fa- 
vouritism has been alleged to exist in the granting of com- 
missions in the army to persons who have what is called in 

1 1 do not venture into the controversial question as to what pro- 
portion of their income the rich ought to contribute to the services 
of the State, but state the complaint as I heard it in Switzerland, and 
as it is heard now in many other countries. 



446 SWITZERLAND pabt n 

America " a pull." As such evils must be expected in 
every country, doubtless they exist here ; but exactly how far 
they exist in the cantons chiefly impugned it would be hard 
even for a Swiss investigator to determine. 

Being in Bern in 1905, after expressing my surprise at 
the excellence of the government of the Confederation, I 
asked a well-informed and judicious Swiss friend to tell me 
frankly what he thought were its faults. " You must have 
some faults," I said, " and you can afford to let me know of 
them." After a little reflection he replied: " We have a 
practice of referring a difficult question on which legislation 
is desired to a Committee — like one of your Royal Com- 
missions or Parliamentary Committees in England — which 
is charged to enquire into and report on the subject. Such 
a Committee frequently chooses to conduct its investigations 
at some agreeable mountain hotel during the summer months, 
and lives there at the public expense longer than is at all 
necessary. This may not often happen, but we consider it 
a scandal." " If you are not jesting," I replied, " and this 
is the blackest sin you can confess, then think of Paris and 
Montreal, Pittsburg and Cincinnati, and, in the words of 
our children's hymn, bless the goodness and the grace that 
have made you a happy Swiss boy." 

To what causes may be ascribed the exemption of this 
Republic from the evils that have afflicted many others? 
Some causes have been already indicated. The course of 
Swiss history has formed in the people an unusually strong 
patriotism and sense of national unity, creating traditions 
of civic duty which have retained exceptional strength. 
Those traditions, fostered and made real by the long prac- 
tice of local self-government, have become part of the na- 
tional mind. The practice of self-government 1ms also'given 
the best kind of political education, teaching men to asso- 
ciate duties with rights, to respect one another's convictions, 
to subordinate personal feelings to the common good, to pre- 
fer constitutional methods to revolutionary violence. The 
country has been poor; and though here as well as else- 
where money can tempt virtue — and money coming from 
abroad used to count for much in old Switzerland — the 
domestic tempters have been few and have had little to offer. 
The largest element in the nation consists of peasant pro- 



chap, xxxii GENERAL REFLECTIONS 447 

prietors, interested in guarding their own rights of property, 
and averse to large or sudden changes. Wealth is more 
equally distributed than in any of the great European coun- 
tries, and those who have wealth owe it more often to their 
frugal habits than to large industrial or financial operations. 

Much is also to be ascribed to some features of national 
character. The people are not impressionable, not of an im- 
pulsive temper, not open to the charms of thrilling eloquence 
or of a fascinating personality. Though the grandeur of 
the scenery that surrounds them has inspired poets like 
Schiller and Coleridge and Byron, they are themselves not 
an imaginative people, and it is patriotism, not the splen- 
dour of nature, that stirs their hearts. They have, more- 
over, some qualities specially valuable in politics, — shrewd- 
ness, coolness, that hard clear perception of the actualities 
of life which it is the fashion to call " realism." Even the 
French-speaking part of the people show these qualities 
when one compares them with the Celts of Ireland, for in- 
stance, or with the Slavs of Poland or Serbia. The Romans, 
far inferior to the Greeks in artistic gift, had a greater apti- 
tude for politics and law. 

Another question follows. How far do the successes of 
democracy in Switzerland entitle us to hope that other peo- 
ples may by following like methods attain a like measure 
of stability and prosperity? Will Swiss institutions bear 
transplanting; or will the peaceable fruits of righteousness 
they have borne ripen only under the conditions of their 
native home? 

Where an institution has succeeded with one particular 
people and in one set of economic conditions, the presump- 
tion that it will suit another people living under different 
conditions is a weak presumption, and affords slight basis 
for prediction. Similarly, if an institution works well be- 
cause it has been worked on certain lines fixed by custom, 
one must not assume that it will work equally well in a coun- 
try where a like custom could hardly be created. There 
are cases in which the custom has become a part of the insti- 
tution. Strip it away and the institution is not the same. 

It is sometimes asked, Is it to men or to institutions or to 
surrounding conditions that the success attained by a nation 
is due? These three things cannot be separated. The con- 



448 SWITZERLAND PA bt n 

ditions do much to make the men, and the men learn how to 
use the conditions ; the institutions are the work of the men, 
and become in turn influences moulding the characters of 
those who work them. 

Among the governmental institutions of Switzerland 
there are at least two which might furnish a model fit to be 
studied by other free governments, and ought to be consid- 
ered by some of the new States that are now springing up 
in Europe. One of them is the vesting of executive power 
in a small Council, chosen for a short term and not part of 
the legislature, instead of in a single President (as in the 
United States and the Spanish- American Republics), or in 
a Cabinet composed of members of the legislature (as in 
France, Britain, and the British self-governing Dominions). 

The Federal Council has worked efficiently in this small 
country with a small legislature, where the leading men are 
familiarly known to a large proportion of the citizens, and 
in this poor country where there are no millionaires or 
gigantic joint-stock companies greedy for benefits which gov- 
ernments can bestow. Would such a Council succeed in the 
United States or in a German republic I The advantages 
which the Swiss scheme has displayed largely depend upon 
the habit of re-electing its members every three years, the 
legislature which elects being itself little changed from one 
election to another. Tins habit of re-election has in its 
uirn depended upon the predominance of one party in both 
Houses of the National Assembly, on the small size of con- 
stituencies, and on the comparatively low temperature at 
which partisanship stands in the country. Could the ad- 
vantages which the Swiss scheme yields be looked for in 
France, where for many years past no party has commanded 
a majority and party divisions cut deep? As a former 
President of the Confederation observed to me, " The plan 
fits a small State where party feeling does not run high. 
Would it work well elsewhere?" And he added: "Where 
grave decisions on foreign policy have to be suddenly taken, 
would a Council composed of men of different tendencies 
be able to take them effectively ? " 

Even in Switzerland is it certain that the conditions 
which have favoured the Council will endure? Were the 
smaller parties in the Assembly to become bitterly antag- 



chap, xxxii EXAMPLES TO CONSIDER 449 

onistic to the Radicals, still the largest, or should the Rad- 
icals themselves be divided by the emergence of new issues 
into various sections, it would be hard, perhaps impossible, 
to prevent the (Executive) Federal Council from becoming 
either a purely party body, to which men were elected for 
party reasons and in which they acted on party lines, just 
as Cabinets do in England and Australia, or else an in- 
effective body, living by a series of compromises, unable to 
pursue a decided and consistent policy, as heretofore? I 
was told that when the Municipal Council of Zurich con- 
tained one member of a party fundamentally opposed to his 
colleagues the situation became very difficult. 1 Neverthe- 
less the Swiss example ought not to be forgotten by those 
who in England complain that a man who has shown em- 
inent capacity for finance or for the conduct of, let us say, 
foreign or colonial affairs is displaced when his party loses 
its majority in the House of Commons. Still more does it 
deserve regard in America, where the disconnection of the 
President's Cabinet from Congress makes it possible for 
him to obtain the ministerial services of those who do not 
belong to his party and need not possess the gifts of speech. 
The other Swiss institution which can be, and has al- 
ready begun to be, imitated in other countries is the direct 
action of the people in voting by Referendum and Initiative. 
Here again let us note the circumstances which in this par- 
ticular country have given to the Referendum such success 
as it has attained. Chief among these is the small size of 
the community called upon to vote. The largest canton has 
a population smaller than that of Lancashire or Rhode 
Island. The Confederation has little more than half the 
population of Australia, one-fourth of the population of 
]STew York State, one-tenth of the population of Great Brit- 
ain ; and even in Switzerland the popular vote does not often 
exceed 60 per cent of the citizens, though the level of po- 
litical knowledge and interest stands higher than anywhere 
else in the world. Add to this that the influence exercised 
by the parties has been slighter than is to be expected in 
any of the three countries above named, so that the Swiss 

iln 1920 the Federal Council contained five Kadicals and two Cath- 
olics. The Socialists having refused to work along with the other 
members, there was no Socialist. There were four members from 
" Suisse allemande," two from " Suisse romande," and one Italian. 
YOU I 2 



450 SWITZERLAND pabt n 

people deliver a judgment less likely to be perverted by- 
party affiliations or partisan representations. Would the 
Referendum work equally well if Party were to become a 
stronger force in the Confederation than it has been since 
1874? This season of fair weather may not last. There 
have been periods in other countries when the light breezes 
of party sentiment that were scarcely ruffling the surface 
of politics suddenly rose into a succession of gales, which 
tossed the ship of State for many a year. Should the So- 
cialist party, already eager and active, develop its organiza- 
tion further, the other parties might be obliged, as lately 
happened in Australia, to create organizations fit to cope 
with the young antagonist. Or, again, schisms might arise 
to divide the party now dominant, and one of its sections 
might form an alliance with another party which would 
change the whole situation. 

Are there any other matters in which other nations may 
profit by Swiss experience ? 

To look elsewhere for geographical and physical condi- 
tions which would produce economic and social phenomena 
resembling those of Switzerland would be idle. To create 
the moral and intellectual conditions that have formed the 
political character of the people would be, if possible at all, 
a difficult and extremely slow work. It is related that an 
American visitor, admiring the close, smooth greensward of 
the Fellows' Garden at Trinity College, Cambridge, enquired 
how the college came to have such a lawn. The answer 
was: "We have been watering and mowing and rolling 
it for three hundred years." Six hundred years have gone 
to the moulding of the political thought and habits of the 
Swiss. Nevertheless there are points in which other States 
may learn from Switzerland. The habit of re-electing to 
the Legislature or to official posts, irrespective of their party 
ties, men who have given good service, might usefully be 
imitated in the States of the American Union, so that the 
influence of national parties should be removed from local 
elections with which national issues have nothing to do. 
Party has its value, and is in some branches of government 
inevitable; but in Britain and France, as well as in Amer- 
ica, it has been worked to death. 

Both Englishmen and Frenchmen would do well to note 



chap, xxxii EXAMPLES TO BE NOTED 451 

the absence in Switzerland of any grants by political au- 
thorities of titles and decorations, ribbons, medals, and other 
such marks of distinction. To reserve these honours for 
persons who have really deserved them has, both in France 
and in England, been found impossible. When they lie in 
the gift of a party chief, they are sure to be used for party 
purposes, and therewith they not only lose their value as 
rewards of good service, but become instruments of a sort 
of corruption. Canada has done well to deprecate their 
introduction into its public life. In a free community the 
truest — and a sufficient — honour any one can win is the 
respect of his fellow-citizens. 

The constant teaching in the schools of civic duty and the 
inculcation of the best traditions of national history is a 
wholesome feature of Swiss life. In no country does one 
find that the people know so much about and care so much 
for their historic past. Englishmen have overlooked this 
side of education so far as regards the masses of the people ; 
and among the educated class it has been frequently turned, 
as sometimes in America also, to the service of a vainglorious 
Jingoism from which Switzerland is exempt. 

The sense of citizenship finds expression in the willing 
acceptance of universal military training as a national obli- 
gation. If the peace-loving peoples of the world are con- 
demned to endure in the future the same apprehension of 
attack by aggressive military States as has afflicted the hearts 
and drained the resources of Europeans during the last two 
generations, they may have to impose a similar obligation. 

Two other things which have greatly contributed to the 
excellence of government in Switzerland may be commended 
to the attention of British and French, and indeed also of 
Spanish-American statesmen. 

Great Britain has long admitted, but has also long neg- 
lected to fulfil, the duty of trying to divide large estates so 
as to create a race of small landowners cultivating the soil 
they dwell upon. It is this class which furnishes the most 
stable element in the population, now swollen by a mass of 
new immigrants, of the United States and Canada. It is a 
class hardly to be found in Argentina and Mexico, and not 
sufficiently numerous in Germany, Spain, and Italy. 

France, and Britain also, have done too little to extend 



452 SWITZERLAND past n 

and develop a system of local self-government, especially in 
rural areas. Jefferson saw that in the presence of such a 
system lay the political strength of New England, in its 
absence the weakness of Virginia. 1 It is the foundation of 
all that is best in the political life of the Swiss democracy. 

It may be asked : " If the success Switzerland has at- 
tained in creating a government which has escaped the evils 
from which other democracies have suffered be due to a 
singular concatenation of favouring conditions not existing 
elsewhere and unlikely to be reproduced elsewhere, of what 
value is her experience for other countries I w 

Its value is to have shown that merits may be attained 
by a government genuinely popular which those who have 
followed the history of other governments meant to be pop- 
ular might have dismissed as unattainable. Citizens may 
be more animated by a widely-diffused sense of public duty, 
legislators and officials may more generally resist tempta- 
tions offered by self-interest, party feeling may be kept 
within safer limits than has been heretofore found pos- 
sible elsewhere. A government by the whole people which 
shall honestly aim at the welfare of the whole people, 
win their confidence and create in them a sense of content- 
ment with their institutions, is not a mere dream of opti- 
mists, not an unrealizable ideal. To have established and 
worked such a government, even if not perfectly, is to have 
rendered a real service to mankind, for it cheers them with 
hopes, putting substance into what those who have followed 
the hard facts of political history have been wont to dismiss 
as illusions. 

The scanty attention which Swiss institutions have re- 
ceived, an<l the inadequate recognition of their value to stu- 
dents of political philosophy, seem largely due to the un- 
exciting and what may be called the prosaic humdrum char- 
acter of Swiss political life. There are no sensational 
events to draw the eyes of the outer world; no Cabinet 
S, as in England; no brilliant displays of oratory, as 
in the French Chamber; no dramatic surprises, as in the. 

i Jefferson, however, must have seen, though he thought it safer not 
to add, that it was not merely the Town meetings but also the qual- 
ity of the men who composed those meetings, educated land-owning 
farmers, members of Congregational churches, that vivified the local 
politics of Massachusetts and Connecticut. 



chap, xxxh WORTH OF SWISS EXAMPLE 453 

huge national nominating conventions of the United States. 
Most readers of history find their chief enjoyment in star- 
tling events and striking personal careers, however quiet their 
own lives and however pacific their tempers. They are 
thrilled by feats of strategic genius like those of Hannibal 
or Belisarius or Marlborough, and by political conflicts 
where defeat is suddenly turned into victory by brilliant 
oratory or resourceful statesmanship. In reading of these 
things few stop to think of the sufferings war brings, the 
bitterness and waste of effort that accompany internal strife ; 
and many dismiss as dull the pages that record the steady 
progress of a nation in civil administration along well- 
drawn lines of economic progress. So the achievements of 
modern Switzerland, just because they do not appeal to 
imagination or emotion, have been little regarded, though 
directed with unusual success to what ought to be the main 
aims of government, the comfort and well-being of the indi- 
vidual, the satisfaction of his desire for intellectual pleas- 
ures, the maintenance of peace and kindly relations between 
social classes. The virtues of Swiss government, clad in 
plain grey homespun, have not caught the world's eye. 
But the homespun keeps out cold and has worn well. 

The future of Switzerland opens up a dim and distant 
vista of possibilities. Her fate lies not entirely in her 
own hands, for she cannot but be affected by the great 
nations that dwell around her. The next decade may be 
for her people, as for the rest of Europe, a stormy time, 
testing institutions and character as they have not been 
tested during the last two generations. 

There were moments in the later Middle Ages when it 
seemed probable that the " Old League of Upper Germany " 
as it was called in the fifteenth century, 1 would extend it- 
self so widely to the north by the addition of new cities as 
to grow into a power stretching from the Vosges to the 
Upper Danube, and perhaps including the western com- 
munes of Tirol. How different would European history 
have been had a league of republics covered the south-western 
Germanic lands, and had a like power arisen out of a 
strengthening and expansion of the league of Hanseatic 
cities in the north! Dis aliter visum. Things might have 
i Vetus Liga Alematmiae Superioris. 



454 SWITZERLAND part ii 

been better than they have turned out, or they might have 
been even worse, though it is hard to imagine anything worse 
than the Thirty Years' War or than that war whose miseries 
Europe has just been bearing. Things do not always turn 
out for the best, as some historical philosophers have vainly 
preached: there have been many calamities redeemed by 
no compensations. But of Switzerland as she is now can 
we say less or hope less than this, that a people which has 
so learnt to love freedom in its truest sense, that has formed 
such lofty traditions of patriotism and has cultivated through 
them a pervading sense of civic duty, — that such a people 
is as well armed against future dangers as any small people 
can be ? To this people may fitly be applied, with the 
change of one word only, the lines which Wordsworth, in 
whose mind England and Switzerland were constantly asso- 
ciated as the two ancient homes of liberty, wrote of his own 
country in her hour of gravest peril : — 

It is not to be thought of that the flood 

Of Switzer freedom, which to the open sea 

Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity 

Hath flowed, with pomp of waters unwithstood, . . . 

That this most famous stream in bogs and sands 

Should perish, and to evil and to good 

Be lost for ever: In our halls is hung 

Armoury of the invincible knights of old. 



CANADA ' 
CHAPTEK XXXIII 

THE COUNTRY AND THE FRAME OF GOVERNMENT 

The study of popular government in Canada derives a 
peculiar interest from the fact that while the economic and 
social conditions of the country are generally similar to 
those of the United States, the political institutions have 
been framed upon English models, and the political habits, 
traditions, and usages have retained an English character. 
Thus it is that in Canada, better perhaps than in any other 
country, the working of the English system can be judged 
in its application to the facts of a new and swiftly growing 
country, thoroughly democratic in its ideas and its institu- 
tions. Let us begin by looking at those facts, for they de- 
termine the economic and social environment into which 
English institutions have been set down. 

The Dominion of Canada is a country more than three 
thousand miles long from east to west, with a region, which 
at the meridian of 114° W. is about seven hundred miles 
broad from north to south. This region is interrupted to 
the north of Lakes Huron and Superior by a rocky and 
barren, and therefore almost uninhabited tract, which sep- 
arates the fertile and populous districts of Ontario from 
those of the Prairie Provinces, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, 
and Alberta, lying farther west. Unless valuable minerals 
are discovered in many parts of this tract, as there have 
been in some, it may remain thinly peopled. The natural 

i In order to prevent the first volume of this book from being much 
larger than the second it has been thought desirable to relegate the 
chapters on the United States to Volume II. and place in Volume I. 
the shorter chapters on Canada. The reader is, however, recommended 
to peruse first the account of democracy in the United States, as much 
of what is said regarding Canada will be better understood if the 
description of the United States, the economic and social conditions 
of which resemble those of Canada, while the political institutions are 
different, has been previously read. 

455 



456 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : CANADA part ii 

resources of the Dominion, besides its still only partially 
explored mineral wealth, consist in vast areas of rich soil, 
in enormous forests, both in the eastern Provinces and in 
British Columbia and in the fisheries of the Maritime Prov- 
inces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, which give em- 
ployment to a large and hardy population. There is coal 
in Nova Scotia and many parts of the West, with large 
deposits on the Pacific coast also; and the total quantity, 
estimated as second in the world only to that in the United 
States and Alaska, is more than sufficient to cause the de- 
velopment of manufactures on a large scale. Severe as are 
the winters on the Atlantic side of the Continent, the climate 
is everywhere healthy, favourable to physical and mental 
vigour, the death-rate low and the birth-rate high. 

These conditions indicate the lines which economic de- 
velopment will follow. Agriculture is now and may long 
continue to bo the chief source of livelihood, and forestry 
may provide employment for centuries if fires are checked 
and replanting is carried out on a large scale. Mining is 
now confined to comparatively few districts, but it, and the 
manufacturing industries also, aided by the utilization of 
the enormous volume of water power, cannot but increase. 
At present tho bulk of the population are tillers of the soil, 
dwelling in rural areas or towns of moderate size; huge 
cities like those of Britain and the United States being com- 
paratively few. Two only (Montreal and Toronto) out of 
a total population of about 8, 000,000, J have more than 300,- 
000 inhabitants, and there are but five others whose popula- 
tion exceeds 50,000. Plenty of good land is still to be had 
at a moderate price, and the agricultural class lives in com- 
fort as does also the less numerous class who produce goods 
for the home market. There is hardly any pauperism and 
need be none at all. No such opposition is raised to immi- 
gration as has been raised in Australia, so the population 
is likely to go on increasing for generations to come, espe- 
cially in the western half of the country. The fact most 
important to note is that the land is almost entirely in the 
hands of small cultivating owners, an industrious and inde- 
pendent class. As great landed estates are unknown, so, 
too, great financial or commercial fortunes are comparatively 
iln 1911 the population wa§ 7,206,000. 



chap, xxxm THE TWO KACES 457 

few, those who have suddenly risen to wealth having mostly 
acquired it by an increase in the value of land, or of rail- 
road properties, and by speculative land investments. 

With the growth, however, of commerce and the develop- 
ment of the country generally the opportunities for accumu- 
lating wealth by business are now fast increasing as they 
did in the United States half a century ago. Meantime, 
one may note the absence in Canada of two factors powerful 
in the great countries of Western Europe and equally so in 
the United States. There are not many great capitalists, 
or great incorporated companies taking a hand in politics 
for their own interests and exciting suspicion by their secret 
influence. Neither has the element of working men, con- 
gregated in large centres of industry and organized in labour 
unions, yet found leaders of conspicuous capacity, nor ac- 
quired a voting power which, whether by votes or by strikes, 
can tell upon the action of governments and party organiza- 
tions, constituting a force outside the regular political par- 
ties and, like the capitalists of France and America, using 
them for the furtherance of its own economic aims. 

One feature which is conspicuous by its absence, alike 
in Great Britain, in the United States, and in Australia 
and New Zealand, is here of the first importance. It is the 
influence of Race and of Religion. 

When Canada was ceded to Great Britain by France in 
1763, the French-speaking inhabitants numbered 60,000. 
They have now grown to nearly two and a half millions, 
or about one-third of the whole population, and this by 
natural increase, the stock being very prolific, for there has 
been practically no immigration from France. The great 
majority of these French speakers dwell in the Province 
of Quebec, which was the region first settled, but a large 
number are also to be found in Eastern and Northern On- 
tario, in the Maritime Provinces and scattered out over the 
West. Of those in Quebec extremely few speak English. 
There they constitute a community retaining with its lan- 
guage its French manners and ideas, quite distinct from 
those of the British districts. This separation is mainly 
due to religion, for they are all Roman Catholics, deeply 
attached to their faith, and if no longer obedient yet still 
deferential, in secular as well as ecclesiastical matters, to 



V. 



458 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : CANADA part u 

their bishops and priests. Nowhere in the world did the 
Roman priesthood during last century exert so great a power 
in politics. 

During the last twenty years the tide of immigrants to 
Canada has flowed freely, chiefly from Scotland and from 
the countries of Central and South-Eastern Europe. There 
have also come into the Western Provinces from the ad- 
joining parts of the United States a great crowd of farmers 
attracted by the cheapness of good land. Nearly all of 
these have been naturalized as Canadian citizens and are 
rapidly blent with their Canadian neighbours. Thus one 
may say, omitting the most recent immigrants, that the 
Canadian nation consists of two parts, nearly one-third 
French speaking and Roman Catholic, two-thirds English 
speaking and Protestant. 1 

The Constitution of Canada was prepared by a group of 
colonial statesmen in 1864 and enacted in 1867, by a statute 
of the British Parliament. The scheme of government is 
Federal, a form prescribed not merely by the diversities to 
be found in a vast territory stretching westward from Nova 
Scotia to the Pacific, but also by the aforesaid dual char- 
acter of the population, one-third of which inhabits Quebec, 
speaking French and following the Roman law established 
there by France when her first settlers arrived, while in the 
other provinces the common law of England prevails. The 
Federal system roughly resembles that of the United States, 
framed seventy-eight years earlier, and that of Australia, 
framed thirty-three years later, as respects the distribution 
of powers between the Central or National and the Provin- 
cial Governments, each in the main independent of the other, 
while the former has nevertheless, within its allotted sphere, 
a direct authority over all citizens, with adequate moans 
for enforcing that authority. 

As this federal form of government has little to do with 

the subject that here concerns us, the actual working of 

democratic institutions, it may suffice to call attention to 

i Though very nearly all the French speakers are Catholics, by no 
means all the Catholics are French speakers, for many of the Ger- 
man, Irish, Italian, and Polish immigrants are Catholics, so it might 
be more exact to say that three-tenths are French speaking, and rather 
more than one-third Catholics. Conversions from either faith to the 
other are uncommon, but the children of Catholics from the European 
Continents often lapse from their faith, the Irish rarely. 



chap, xxxiii THE CONSTITUTION 459 

three important points in which the National Government 
has powers wider in Canada than in Australia or the United 
States. 

1. The legislative authority of the Dominion Govern- 
ment covers a larger field, and includes a power of dis- 
allowing acts of the Provincial Legislature. This particular 
power is, however, seldom used, and practically only where 
such a Legislature is deemed to have exceeded the functions 
assigned to it by the Constitution or to have violated any 
fundamental principle of law and justice. 

2. Judicial authority (except as respects minor local 
courts), belongs solely to the Dominion Government. 

3. All powers and functions of government not expressly 
assigned either to the Dominion or to the Provinces re- 
spectively are deemed to belong to the Dominion, i.e. where 
doubt arises the presumption is in its favour, whereas in 
the United States and in Australia the presumption is in 
favour of the States. 

4. Amendments to the Constitution can be made not by 
the people, but only by a Statute of the Imperial Parlia- 
ment of the United Kingdom. This follows from the fact 
that the Constitution itself is a Statute of that Parliament. 
But the provision is in reality no restriction of the powers 
of the Dominion, for it is well understood that in such a 
matter the British Parliament would take no action except 
when satisfied that the Canadian people as a whole wished 
it to do so, and were approving any request made by the 
Dominion Parliament to that effect, just as the Act of 1867 
was passed to give effect to what had been shown to be the 
wishes of the Dominion itself. This theoretic or technical 
sovereignty of the British Parliament provides a more con- 
venient method of altering the Constitution than the compli- 
cated machinery created for that purpose in the United 
States and in Australia, 1 and is even more certain to 
give to a dissident minority whatever consideration it 
deserves. 

The frame of the Dominion or National Government has 

been constructed on the lines of the Cabinet or Parliamen- 

1 That machinery will be described in the chapters on Australia and 
the United States respectively. Other points in which the constitu- 
tional arrangements of Canada differ from those of the United States 
will be noticed in Chapter XXXV. 



460 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : CANADA part ii 

tary system of Britain and all her self-governing colonies. 
Executive power is vested nominally in the Governor-Gen- 
eral as representative of the British Crown; but is in fact 
exercised by a Cabinet or group of ministers, who hold office 
only so long as they can retain the support of a majority 
in the Dominion House of Commons. They are virtually 
a Committee of Parliament, and in it all of them sit. Thus 
the actual Executive is the creature of the House of Com- 
mons, possessing as against it only one power, that of appeal- 
ing to the people by a dissolution of Parliament. If minis- 
ters do not dissolve they must resign, and if they dissolve 
and the election goes against them, they resign forthwith 
and a new Cabinet is formed. The relations of the Execu- 
tive and Legislative Departments are thus far more inti- 
mate than in the United States, for the Ministry sit in the 
Legislature and are, just as in France and England, the 
leaders of its majority for the time being. 

The Dominion Legislature consists of two Houses. The 
House of Commons numbers 235 members, elected on uni- 
versal suffrage, woman suffrage having been in all the Prov- 
inces also, except three, recently adopted. 1 Its legal dura- 
tion, subject to a prior dissolution by the Executive, is five 
years. The Senate consists of 96 persons nominated for life 
by the Governor-General, i.e. by the Ministry for the time 
being, as vacancies occur by death or resignation. A num- 
ber of senators proportionate to population is assigned to 
each Province. Except in financial matters its functions 
are legally equal to those of the House, but it is in fact far 
less important, for though it revises and amends Bills, it 
seldom ventures to reject or seriously modify any measure 
sent up by the House of Commons. The latter is the real 
driving force, just as the House of Commons is in England 
and for the same reasons. The House controls finance; 
and since it has the making and unmaking of the Executive 
Ministries, is the centre of party strife. Contests between 
the two Houses arise only when one party comes into power 
after another party has had for a long time the appointment 

i In the beginning of 1920 it had not been enacted in Nova Scotia, 
Quebec, and Prince Edward Island. Women are eligible for seats in 
the House of Commons, and are already members of one or two Pro- 
vincial legislatures. 



chap, xxxni PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENTS 461 

of senators, and effective opposition disappears after a few 
sessions, when vacancies filled by the new Ministry have 
changed the party balance. 

The judges of the Supreme Court of the Dominion, and 
of the Supreme Courts in the provinces, as also of the 
County Courts, are appointed for life by the Executive (i.e. 
the Dominion Cabinet), and can as in Britain and Aus- 
tralia be removed from office only upon an address of both 
Houses of Parliament. They are taken from the Bar, and 
the salaries paid, though lower than in England, are higher 
than those which generally prevail in the United States. . 
An appeal lies from the Supreme Court of Canada to the 
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in England, of 
which a Canadian Justice of the Supreme Court is a mem- 
ber. There exists no veto upon the legislation of the Do- 
minion Parliament except that which the Governor-General 
at the direction of the British Crown, or that Crown itself 
on the advice of the British Cabinet, might in point of strict 
law exercise, but does not in fact now exercise, although 
cases may be imagined in which its existence might be 
thought useful for the preservation of some interest common 
to the whole of the British Dominions or the fulfilment of 
some international obligation undertaken on their behalf. 
Neither does the Canadian Constitution contain any re- 
strictions upon legislative power such as those imposed on 
Congress by the United States Constitution. The Do- 
minion Parliament is limited only by the assignment of 
exclusive jurisdiction on certain specified subjects to the 
legislatures of the Provinces and by the fact that it cannot 
directly and by its own sole action alter the Constitution as 
set forth in the Act of 1867. Otherwise its powers are 
plenary, like those of the British Parliament, whose tradi- 
tions it was desired to carry over into the New World. 

While the Ministers and a very few of the higher officials 
change with the departure from power of one party and 
the accession to power of another, all the other posts in the 
Civil Service are held for life or " good behaviour," i.e. 
a man once appointed is not dismissed except for misconduct 
or proved incompetence. There is therefore no Spoils sys- 
tem in the United States sense of the term, a Civil Service 



462 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : CANADA part ii 

Commission having been recently created which fills up all 
posts. But in such higher appointments as are still left to 
the Executive, party affiliations and the influence of leading 
politicians counts for much, so that it is not necessarily the 
best men who are selected. Civil servants having a secure 
tenure are not expected to work for their party, but they 
are not forbidden to do so, though if they do, and their 
party is defeated, they will probably be dismissed as offend- 
ers against propriety. 

The Governments of the Nine Provinces (which corre- 
spond to the States in the Australian Commonwealth and 
in the U.S.A.) are also created, or rather re-created and 
remodelled by the Constitution of 1S67, for most of them 
had existed before it was enacted. 1 They reproduce the 
system of Cabinet and Parliamentary Government provided 
for the Dominion, save in the fact that it is only the legis- 
latures of Quebec and Nova Scotia that have two Chambers. 
The head <>f the Executive is the Lieutenant-Governor, who 
is appointed for a five years' term by the Governor-General, 
i.e. by the Dominion Cabinet lor the time being, and is 
usually a member of the party to which the Cabinet belongs, 
and a leading politician of the Province. He does not, 
however, take any share in party politics, 1 but tills the 
place <>t' a sort of local constitutional king, being advised 
by ;i ministry of six or seven members which has the support 
of the majority in the Legislature and is responsible to it. 

The system is, in miniature, that of the British Parliament 

and Cabinet The Legislature is elected by universal suf- 
frage for four years, subject to an earlier dissolution by the 
Cabinet. It has, under the Constitution Act of 1867, the 
power of amending its Provincial Constitution, subject to 
the rarely exercised power of disallowance vested in the 
Dominion Government In the two Provinces which have 

retained Second Chambers filled by the appointment of the 

I Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta have received their consti- 
tutions and Governments since isfi7. Their territories were purchased 
by the Dominion Government from the Hudson Bay Company. 

'Instances have occurred in which ;i 1 .ieut eiuint -< Jovernor took in- 
dependent action in what was deemed to be the general public interest, 
the most reeent being that in which (in Manitoba) a judicial enquiry 
was ordered into misdeeds alleged to have been committed by a Min- 
istry. See as to this and the earlier case in Quebec the book of Mr. 
Justice Riddell on the Constitution of Canada, p. 108. 



chap, xxxiii CHARACTER OF GOVERNMENT 463 

Executive as vacancies occur, few controversies have arisen, 
the Second Chamber generally complying with the wishes 
of the popular House. No desire for the creation of a Sec- 
ond Chamber has been expressed in those provinces which 
do not possess one, perhaps because they take their notion of 
such a Chamber from the Dominion Senate, a body which, 
though not wanting in talent and experience, is weak be- 
cause nominated: but the bicameral system has been, where 
it exists, of service in preventing jobs, and a Lieutenant- 
Governor of Ontario spoke to me of instances in which the 
existence of a revising body would have been useful in mak- 
ing it possible to reconsider and reverse an unfortunate de- 
cision taken by the Assembly. 

This scheme of government seems at first sight less demo- 
cratic than that of the United States, because the direct ac- 
tion of the people is not so frequently invoked, their people's 
share in the government being limited to the election of 
representatives to the legislature, Federal and Provincial. 
But the power of the people is in fact by and through that 
one function so complete that nothing more is wanted, and 
it is in one point ampler than in the United States, because 
the legislatures are restrained by no such limitations as both 
the Federal and the State Constitutions contain. In choos- 
ing and instructing their representatives the citizens have 
all the means they need for giving effect to their will, for 
the representatives choose the Executive, and if the Execu- 
tive and the Legislature diifer, their differences can be 
promptly settled in appealing to the people by a dissolution 
of Parliament. The Frame of Government which I have 
described in outline is accordingly highly democratic, and 
the experience of England in last century commended it as 
having proved both democratic and efficient. It fixes re- 
sponsibility upon representatives each of whom can be called 
to account by his constituents, and upon a small number of 
administrators each of whom can be watched, questioned, 
censured, and if need be expelled from office by the Legis- 
lature. Given favourable economic and social conditions 
in the country where it is to be worked, it ought to give 
excellent results. 

If any source of danger to peace and good government 
was discernible, it lay in the existence of two races which, 



464 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : CANADA pabt n 

though not hostile, were mutually jealous and showed no 
tendency to blend. 

Government of Canada has been worked, as in every 
other free country, by Party. That was contemplated 
when the Constitution was enacted, for parties had been 
in full swing for generations before 1867, and insurrections 
had occurred so late as 1837. In Canada as in England 
the parties run both the legislative and the administrative 
machinery, and are responsible to the people for the use 
they make of it. But before proceeding to examine how 
that machinery is actually worked it is well to look a little 
more closely at the conditions which Nature and History 
have here provided. They are eminently favourable, not 
only to the growth of population and of national wealth, 
but also to the orderly development of free self-governing 
institutions. 



CHAPTER XXXIV 

THE PEOPLE AND THE PARTIES 

This land in which settlers from the two great races of 
Western Europe have been called to be fruitful and multiply 
and replenish the earth is a land where there is room for 
everybody for generations to come, and in which the ground 
is cumbered by few injustices to be redressed, no sense of 
ancient wrongs to rouse resentment, no slough of despondent 
misery out of which the worker finds it hard to emerge. 

About three-fourths of the Canadian householders are 
farmers, nearly all of them owning their own farms, living 
in comfort, and all the more so because sobriety has become 
more general than it was thirty years ago. Not only are 
they well off, but nearly everybody is well off, the native 
part of the wage-earning population also being well re- 
munerated and on good terms with the employers. It is 
only lately, and in places where there is a mass of recent 
immigrants, that labour troubles have created serious strife, 
and such grievances as the traveller hears of in the rural 
districts relate to the maintenance of a tariff on imports 
which raises the price of manufactured goods for the benefit 
of home producers and to the undue power which great rail- 
roads can exert in the districts they traverse, and, in some 
districts, to the action of great companies in controlling 
facilities for the transporting and disposal of crops. In 
Ontario and the Maritime Provinces as well as in the West- 
ern Provinces the schools are so abundant and excellent that 
there is practically no illiteracy except among the new ar- 
rivals from Europe. Every native English-speaking Cana- 
dian is educated, reads at least one newspaper, and as a rule 
takes an intelligent interest in public affairs, national and 
local. This is no less true of that large body of immigrants 
in the Prairie Provinces * which has come in from the United 

i Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. 
465 
VOL. I 2 H 



466 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : CANADA part ii 

States during the last thirty years, but not true of the recent 
immigrants from Eastern Europe. The people are assidu- 
ous churchgoers, and are, especially in the Scottish districts, 
much occupied with church affairs, but the pastors, although 
respected, do not generally exert political influence on their 
flocks. ~No rural population except that of Switzerland, is 
better qualified for the duties of citizenship and more ready 
to discharge them, though it ought perhaps to be added that 
there have been those who allow their willingness to be stim- 
ulated by the receipt of pecuniary inducements at elections, 
glossing over this lapse from civic virtue by the argument 
that they ought to be compensated for the time lost in going 
to the polling-place. This habit, not infrequent in Ontario, 
is quite as prevalent in the State of Ohio, on the other side 
of Lake Erie. 

The class of workers in manufactures or mines is, as 
already observed, comparatively small, for there are few 
great industrial centres, and only four cities (Montreal, To- 
ronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver) with populations exceed- 
ing 120,000. So much of that class as speaks English or 
French is educated and takes an interest in politics, but it 
has not yet grown large enough to form in any one area, 
except, in Ontario and British Columbia, a working men's 
party in a Provincial Legislature. It is, moreover, less per- 
meated by Communist or Syndicalist doctrines than is the 
same class in France and Australia. Here, as in the United 
States, the great strength of the two old parties which em- 
brace men of all classes, has retarded the creation of a third 
party resting on a class basis. Except in the Maritime 
Provinces, the most recent immigrants perform a great part 
of the unskilled work of the country, and they furnish a 
soil more favourable to the propagation of the doctrines of 
any group of European extremists than does the native popu- 
lation. Till the Winnipeg strike of 1919, there had been 
few signs of antagonism between the wage-earners and the 
employers. 

In the French-speaking districts of Quebec and of East- 
ern Ontario the conditions are altogether different. The 
inhabitants of these districts do not call themselves " French " 
but either simply " Canadians " or " French speakers/' for 
they have little in common with modern France except their 



chap, xxxiv CHARACTER OF POPULATION 467 

language and some traits of character. So far as they be- 
long to France, it is to a France of the eighteenth, not of the 
twentieth century. Since the Revolution of 1789, and still 
more since the establishment of the present Republic in 
France, they have been but slightly affected by French po- 
litical institutions or ideas; for though educated men read 
French books, the anti-clerical attitude of the Republicans 
who have governed France during the last forty years has 
been repellent. All through last century English thought 
and English ways told very little upon them; and that re- 
markable assimilative power which French culture possesses 
was shown in the fact that those Scotsmen or Englishmen 
who settled among them were almost always Gallicized in 
speech and religion. It is remarked to-day that few French 
speakers are to be found among the undergraduates of the 
leading non-Catholic Universities. Were the two elements 
to blend, they might possibly produce a new type of char- 
acter, combining what is best in each, but of blending there 
is at present no sign. The difference of religion forbids it. 

The birth-rate is so much higher among the French speak- 
ers than in the English districts that some of the former 
have hoped that Canada would end by being a French coun- 
try, but the immigrants, if they come from the United States, 
speak English already, and if they come from Continental 
Europe learn English and not French. The probabilities 
therefore are that English will ultimately prevail and be the 
general tongue of the Dominion. 

As compared with the British population of Ontario and 
the West, the standard of material well-being among these 
Quebec habitants is lower, because the land is poorer, the 
farms mostly smaller, the families larger, the people less 
energetic though equally industrious, and less well educated. 
But the greatest difference is seen in the power of the Ro- 
man Catholic clergy. The Church has large estates, with 
numerous and wealthy monastic establishments, and the 
people are nearly all fervent Catholics. The bishops used 
to rule through the priests, who were wont to direct their 
parishioners how to vote, and were generally obeyed, not 
only by the cultivators of the soil but by the wage-earners 
of the towns, till about thirty years ago. Even now they 
retain a real though much diminished power. Owing to the 



468 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : CANADA part ii 

rapid increase of the French-speaking population, which 
would be still more rapid but for the high rate of infant 
mortality, there has been a considerable migration from Que- 
bec into Eastern Ontario as well as the Western Provinces. 
Wherever the emigrant goes, the priest follows and retains 
a certain influence, but it counts for more in the homogeneous 
French-speaking masses of Quebec, the Provincial Govern- 
ment of which, though legally quite as democratic as that 
of Manitoba or Alberta, is by no means the same in its 
working. 

Taking the native population of Canada to be as intel- 
ligent, educated, interested in self-government and qualified 
for self-government as a traveller finds in any part of the 
English-speaking world, we have next to enquire what are 
the subjects which chiefly interest it, what are the issues by 
which it, like all free peoples, is divided into political par- 
ties, and in what wise those parties conduct the affairs of 
the nation. As I am not writing a general account of Can- 
ada but concerned only with those phenomena which illus- 
trate the working of democratic government, it is enough to 
note in passing, without attempting to discuss, some topics 
which, important as they are, do not belontr to the sphere 
of party controversy, such are the means of developing the 
natural resources of the country, and its relation to Great 
Britain and to the other Self-Governing Dominions. Ex- 
ternal affairs, however, need a few words, for the fiscal re- 
lations of the Dominion to the United States have at times 
become involved with diiferenccs of opinion between Pro- 
tectionists and the advocates of Free Trade or of a low tariff, 
and did in that way affect internal politics, the Protection- 
ists declaring that the policy of their opponents would make 
Canada dependent on her powerful neighbour to the south. 
This ground of contention has tended to disappear as other 
disputes with that neighbour have subsided. In recent years 
a series of treaties and commissions determining all bound- 
ary questions and providing methods of arbitration for the 
adjustment of whatever controversies may arise over water 
rights and transportation on railways along the borders of 
Canada and the United States, have virtually removed causes 
of quarrel, and hold out a promise of permanently good re- 
lations between the two great neighbour peoples. The ar- 



chap, xxxit EXTERNAL RELATIONS 469 

rangement made in 1817 by which no ships of war, other 
than two or three small vessels armed for police work, were 
to be placed on the Great Lakes, has been loyally observed, 
to the immeasureable benefit of both nations, for it has not 
only made forts and fleets superfluous, but has created an 
atmosphere of mutual confidence. 

There were at one time persons in the United States who 
talked of the incorporation of Canada in their republic as 
a thing to be desired and worked for, and there were a few, 
though always only a few, Canadians who, looking upon this 
as a natural consequence of geographical conditions, held it 
to be inevitable. But during the present century such ideas 
have died out in Canada, and it is only a few belated and 
unthinking persons in the United States that still give ex- 
pression to them. Those apprehensions of designs on the 
part of the United States for which there might have been 
grounds forty years ago, are now idle. The people of the 
United States have laid aside not only any thought of aggres- 
sion but even that slightly patronizing air which formerly 
displeased the smaller nation. Sensible men in both coun- 
tries recognize the many reasons which make it better for 
each nation that it should continue to develop itself in its 
own fashion, upon its own historic lines, in cordial friend- 
ship with the other. The United States feels itself large 
enough already : Canada does not wish to forgo that nation- 
hood into which she has entered by the recognition accorded 
to her claims in the Peace Treaties of 1919. 

In a country inhabited by two races of a different lan- 
guage and religion, it might be expected that these differ- 
ences would form the basis of political parties. This might 
have happened in Canada, but for two causes. One is the 
Federal system of government which has permitted the 
French-speaking and Roman Catholic population to have 
their own way in that Province where they form the vast 
majority, and which similarly permits the inhabitants of 
English speech and Protestant faith who predominate in 
the other Provinces to legislate there according to their own 
views. The other cause may be found in the party system 
itself, which has associative as well as a disruptive power. 
On many questions which have nothing to do with race or 
religion English speakers are in agreement with French 



470 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : CANADA part ii 

speakers, Protestants in agreement with Catholics, so that 
each political party is composed of both elements, neither of 
which could afford to offend and alienate the other. Sir 
Wilfrid Laurier, the distinguished leader whom the Liberal 
party lately lost, was a Catholic from Quebec, though too 
independent to be acceptable to the Catholic hierarchy. Yet 
he had the support not only of many Catholics in that Prov- 
ince but of Presbyterians and Methodists in Ontario and 
the west, while the chiefs of the Conservatives have fre- 
quently been helped by Catholic votes. When controversies, 
sometimes acute, have arisen over religious teaching in 
State Schools in Provinces where there is a considerable 
Catholic minority, 1 there has been a disposition to settle 
them by compromises, for the leading statesmen on both 
sides, feeling the danger of raising a racial issue between 
the French-speaking and the British elements in the popula- 
tion, do their best to smooth matters down, neither side 
wishing to commit their party as a whole because each would 
by such a course alienate some of its supporters. A like 
tendency to division between the two elements of the popu- 
lation has occasionally been revealed when questions arose 
involving the relations of Canada to Great Britain. This 
happened also when the use of the French language in 
schools placed in districts with a considerable French- 
speaking element. Though opinion comes near to unanim- 
ity in desiring to maintain a political connection obviously 
beneficial to both elements, the French-speaking population 
is less zealously ready to bear its share in responsibilities 
common to the British dominions as a whole, so at the out- 
break of the Great War of 1914—18 the opposition to a pro- 
posed general levy of men to serve in that war found a 
wider support in that population than among the English- 
speaking citizens. The controversy, however, though it af- 
fected politics for the time being, passed away, and similar 
circumstances are not likely to recur. 

Another subject which has been constantly before men's 
minds during the last twenty years has never, as it has in 
England, been taken up by either of the established political 
parties, because each has feared to lose at least as much as 

i Especially in Ontario and Manitoba. In Quebec the Roman hier- 
archy get their own way. 



chap, xxxiv PAKTY ISSUES 471 

it could gain by committing itself to a policy. It is that 
of the regulation or prohibition of the sale of intoxicants. 
Party leaders have been shy of touching this live wire, be- 
cause it cuts across the lines of party division in the Prov- 
inces, so the agitation for prohibitory legislation, now en- 
acted everywhere except in Quebec, was, as in the United 
States, left to independent organizations. 1 The question 
that has since 1867 been the most permanently controversial 
is that of a Protective tariff, a question argued less on gen- 
eral principles than with a view to the direct pecuniary in- 
terests of manufacturers on the one hand and agricultural 
consumers on the other. The struggle is not between the 
advocates of Protection and those of tariff for revenue only, 
but turns on the merits of a lower or higher scale of import 
duties. 

Since 1867 — and for our present purpose we need go 
no further back — the questions which have had the most 
constant interest for the bulk of the nation are, as is nat- 
ural in a prosperous and rapidly growing community, those 
which belong to the sphere of commercial and industrial 
progress, the development of the material resources of the 
country by rendering aid to agriculture, by the regulation 
of mining, by constructing public works and opening up 
lines of railway and canal communication — matters scarcely 
falling within the lines by which party opinion is divided, 
for the policy of laissez faire has few adherents in a coun- 
try which finds in governmental action or financial support 
to private enterprises the quickest means of carrying out 
every promising project. So when party conflicts arise over 
these matters, it is not the principle that is contested — no 
Minister would expose himself to the reproach of backward- 
ness — but the plan advocated by the Government or the 
Opposition as the case may be. The task of each party is 
to persuade the people that in this instance its plan prom- 
ises quicker and larger results, and that it is fitter to be 
trusted with the work. Thus it happens that general po- 
litical principles, such as usually figure in party platforms, 
count for little in politics, though ancient habit requires 

1 The sale of alcoholic liquors ( except for medical and scientific 
purposes) and for export has been practically forbidden, in slightly 
different forms, in all the Provinces save Quebec. 



472 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : CANADA pabt h 

them to be invoked. Each party tries to adapt itself from 
time to time to whatever practical issue may arise. Oppor- 
tunism is inevitable, and the charge of inconsistency, though 
incessantly bandied to and fro, is lightly regarded. The 
tendency to an adaptive flexibility is increased by the duty 
— indeed the necessity — of tactfully handling the racial and 
religious feelings of the voters. Thus politics is apt to be- 
come a series of compromises, and the bitterness with which 
elections seem to be fought is softened by the fact that there 
is no sentiment of class hostility involved. The rich and 
the less rich — for one can hardly talk of the poor — the 
farmers, merchants, manufacturers, shopkeepers, profes- 
sional men, have been found in both parties, and if the 
country be taken as a whole, in tolerably equal proportions. 
No Labour party has arisen except among the industrial 
workers of Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver, 
and among the organized unions of the miners on the Pa- 
cific coast. But though the feelings of antagonism which 
most powerfully affect men's minds are sedulously kept in 
the background, though most of the topics which during the 
last few decades formed the staple of controversy have been 
of transient import, not involving large general principles, 
the fact remains that parties have carried on a ceaseless 
strife with a surprising keenness of feeling. The historical 
causes of this lie far back in the past, behind 1867, and 
only one of them need be referred to — a religious aversion 
which, though not always avowed, intensifies party spirit 
among the more extreme Protestants as well as the more 
ardent Catholics. There is still in Ontario an Orange party, 
well organized in its Lodges, which rejoices to celebrate with 
triumphant processions and speeches, on the shores of the 
Great Lakes, the anniversary of a victory gained more than 
two centuries ago by one of the two parties that were then 
struggling for mastery in an island, distracted then as now, 
that lies three thousand miles away beyond the Ocean. 

In Canada the motive of personal advantage which stimu- 
lates the activity of many party workers in the United 
States is hardly felt, for the places to be won are too few 
to enter into the mind of the average private citizen. 

Neither is an attachment to doctrines essential, for here, 
as among the English-speaking peoples generally, the im- 



chap, xxxiv THE CANADIAN CTJJBS 473 

pulse to combat and to associations for the purposes of com- 
bat in politics is so strong that it can dispense with doctrines. 
Party seems to exist for its own sake. In Canada ideas are 
not needed to make parties, for these can live by heredity 
and, like the Guelfs and Ghibellines of mediaeval Italy, by 
memories of past combats. The pugnacity of a virile race 
is kept alive by the two unending sets of battles which are 
kept going, one in the House of Commons at Ottawa, the 
other in their Provincial Legislature. Men grow up from 
boyhood identifying themselves with their party and re- 
garding its fortunes as their own. Attachment to leaders 
of such striking gifts and long careers, as were Sir John 
Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier, created a personal loy- 
alty which exposed a man to reproach as a deserter when he 
voted against his party. And besides all this, there was 
that sort of sporting interest which belongs to a struggle 
between the Ins and Outs. 

This vehemence of zeal I have described was, however, 
not usually carried into Provincial and much less into mu- 
nicipal elections, which latter have not generally been fought 
on party lines, though of course a candidate who happens 
to be popular with his party is likely to attract their votes. 
Neither does party feeling, except in a few localities, intro- 
duce bitterness into social life. As in England and the 
United States, it can co-exist with personal good feeling be- 
tween the opposing armies. The same kind of sentiment 
which makes the undergraduates of Oxford and Cambridge 
cheer the rival oarsmen who have just vanquished their own 
crew in a boat race, and which requires the defeated candi- 
date for the Presidency of the United States to telegraph his 
congratulations to his successful competitor, mitigates party 
strife. This happy tendency, quite compatible with violent 
talk and reckless imputations at election time, has helped 
to produce, and has been itself strengthened by, the excellent 
institution of the Canadian Clubs. About the beginning of 
the century a club was founded at Hamilton, Ontario, in- 
tended to foster both Dominion patriotism and local patriot- 
ism, and to promote the growth of an enlightened public 
opinion by bringing together men of both parties or of no 
party to listen to addresses on all sorts of non-partisan topics 
at lunch or dinner. Finding favour, the idea spread fast 



474 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : CANADA part ii 

and far, till within a few years similar clubs had sprang 
up in nearly all the cities of the Dominion. They have 
been of great service in accustoming men of opposite parties 
to know one another personally and work together for com- 
mon civic or national aims, and are now, especially in the 
English-speaking cities, a valuable factor in Canadian life, 
giving to eminent visitors from Europe and the United 
States opportunities of bringing their views and counsels 
before Canadians of all classes, while in some places also 
filling a function similar to that of those non-partisan asso- 
ciations of business men in the cities of the United States 
which have there work for the betterment of social condi- 
tions and municipal reform. 

Part of what has been said applies rather to the recent 
past than to the present, for the years since 1914 have seen 
many changes. The first of these was a schism in the Lib- 
eral party, arising over the question of compulsory war serv- 
ice, which led to a coalition of a section of that party witli 
the Conservatives then in power. This combination may be 
transitory, and is less significant than the still more recent 
emergence of a small Labour party in some industrial areas, 
such as Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg and the mining dis- 
tricts of British Columbia, and of a Farmers' party, which 
in the Province of Ontario l suddenly found itself after an 
election the largest of the various groups in the Provincial 
legislature, and formed a Ministry there. The example of 
the independent action which the landowning farmers had 
been taking, outside the old parties, in the North- Western 
States of America, did something to rouse Canadian fann- 
ers to a like assertion of their own special interests, inade- 
quately represented in the legislature. But something may 
also be attributed to a general loosening of party ties and 
loss of confidence in the successive party Ministries, and 
indeed in the politicians generally who had been at the head 
of affairs in the Dominion and in the Provinces during the 
last fifteen or twenty years. Of this more hereafter. 

Party organization is looser than in the United States and 
scarcely so tight as it has grown to be in England : nor is the 

i The " Grain Growers of the West Association," lately formed in 
the Prairie Provinces, and now prospering there is another sign of 
agricultural discontent. 



chap, xxxiv PARTY ORGANIZATIONS 475 

nomination of candidates that supremely important matter 
which it long ago became in the United States, for there is 
no such octopus of a party machine extending its tentacles 
over the country and practically controlling the action of 
most voters. A man gets accepted as candidate much as 
happens in England, often because he is of some local note, 
sometimes because, though not a resident, he is recommended 
by persons of influence in the party; and if once elected 
is, if assiduous and loyal, generally continued as the local 
party standard-bearer. Although, therefore the right of 
the constituency to determine its candidate is taken as a 
matter of course, the methods of choice are as fluid and in- 
formal as they have usually been in Britain. There is an 
increasing tendency to prefer local men as candidates. 
Provincial elections excite less interest, except when it is 
desired to punish a discredited Ministry, than do those to 
the Dominion House of Commons, and though both, speak- 
ing generally, are fought on the same national party lines, 
there are those who think it well to vote for candidates of 
one party in a Provincial and those of another in a Do- 
minion election in order that the former may feel itself 
more closely watched. Neither in the Provinces nor in the 
Dominion does a party victory carry with it a distribution 
of " good things " among the minor politicians. To win an 
election is of course a gain to the leading politicians on the 
look out for office and to those few underlings who expect 
sometime or other to receive favours at their hands, but 
these places are trifling in number compared to those that 
have to be fought for as spoils of victory in the United 
States. In Canada, therefore, one hears little of Rings, and 
the Boss, though he exists both in and out of the legislatures, 
is nothing more than the figure, familiar in many countries, 
of the politician who brings to the business of intrigue more 
of the serpent's wisdom than of the dove's innocence. 

When the citizen comes to the polls as a voter, by what 
motives is his vote determined? 

In English-speaking districts, primarily by his party al- 
legiance, and to some extent by his ecclesiastical sympathies, 
which in some districts are markedly anti-Roman. In 
Erench-speaking districts, primarily by the influence of the 
priesthood; yet that influence does not always prevail, for 



476 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : CANADA part ii 

it may be overridden by attachment to a French-speaking 
national, or even local, leader who maintains an independent 
attitude. Secondarily by his own material interests, whether 
they take the form of desiring the imposition or the reduc- 
tion of protective import duties, or that of seeking grants of 
public money for some local purpose, or of urging the con- 
struction of a railroad calculated to benefit his neighbour- 
hood. This class of considerations has been often strong 
enough to override not only religious but even party loyalty, 
and is likely to grow stronger as party loyalty declines. Sel- 
dom, however, does it affect all the voters in any given 
locality. Thus the result of an election used to be some- 
what more predictable in Canada than in the United States 
or in England, because party loyalty was, generally speak- 
ing, a more important factor. 



CHAPTEE XXXV 

WORKING OF THE GOVERNMENT 

From this study of the average citizen and the sentiments 
that move him when he comes to deliver his will on public 
affairs, we may pass to the machinery by which that will 
is brought to bear on the government of the country. His 
first duty is to elect representatives, so to elections a few 
sentences may be devoted. 

These are fewer than in the United States because no 
administrative officers are chosen at the polls, all, both in the 
Dominion and in the Provinces, being appointed by the 
Executive Ministry. Elections are believed to be honestly 
conducted so far as the presiding officials are concerned, 
but personation and repeating occasionally occur, perhaps 
even ballot stuffing, for in Ontario a Government was not 
long ago supposed to have fallen because its electoral mis- 
deeds had shocked the conscience of the best citizens. 
Neither are there any such riots as used to be frequent in 
England in former days. Each party allows the meetings 
of the other to be held peaceably, satisfied with having dis- 
charged its own heavy artillery of vituperation. Treating 
is no longer common, the consumption of intoxicants having 
been restrained by law, and will probably decline with the 
increased size of constituencies. Bribery, however, is not 
rare. The laws enacted on lines found effective in Eng- 
land failed to restrain these malpractices, usually managed 
by underlings, and apparently by both parties alike. Hap- 
pening to hear a politician complain bitterly of the heavy 
expenditure by the opposite party which had caused the de- 
feat of his own, I enquired why petitions had not been more 
largely presented by the losing side, and was answered that 
things might have come out which were better left in dark- 
ness. Each side had bribed because it believed the other to 
be bribing, and the wealthier party got the best of it; for 

477 



478 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : CANADA part ii 

money counts here as in most countries, and campaign funds 
are thought indispensable. 1 

From the electors we pass to the legislators. Those who 
sit in the Dominion House come chiefly from the profes- 
sional and commercial classes, many of whom have a private 
income making them independent of their salaries, with a 
fair sprinkling of agriculturists, rarely from the wage-earn- 
ing class. The percentage of lawyers is decidedly smaller 
than in Congress, and rather lower than in the British 
House of Commons. In the Provincial Chambers there is a 
larger proportion of lawyers of the second or third rank, the 
rest mostly farmers, and the average level of ability and 
education is somewhat lower than at Ottawa. No law or 
custom requires a member to reside in the place he repre- 
sents, a fortunate adherence to British custom, for it opens 
to talent a wider door; but though some men of mark from 
the cities sit for constituencies with which they have no tie 
of family or residence, the majority, especially in the Pro- 
vincial Legislatures, reside in their constituencies. The 
tendency to retain the same member from one election to 
another helps to increase the number of those persons who 
possess some experience. There are very few rich men, not 
because such persons would be distrusted by the electors, but 
because they prefer to attend to their business enterprises, 
finding it almost as easy to exert political influence on legis- 
lation from without as within. Membership in the Do- 
minion Parliament has some little social value, but no more 
than that which attaches to any conspicuous success in com- 
merce. In a country which opens up great possibilities to 
the man of business capacity, politics as a career does not 
greatly attract a man too scrupulous to use his political .posi- 
tion for gainful purposes, unless of course his oratorical 
talents are such as to bring him at once to the front and to 
keep him there. It is not surprising, therefore, that the 
average of ability in the Federal Parliament should be, as 
most Canadians declare, rather lower to-day than it was 
thirty or forty years ago, in the days of Macdonald, Mac- 
kenzie, and Edward Blake. Nevertheless the presence of 

i It was alleged at a general election not many years ago that large 
contributions to party funds had been made by some great manu- 
facturing firms. 



chap, xxxv THE LEGISLATORS 479 

some men of eminent ability occasionally raises the debates 
to a high level. The House of Commons need not fear a 
comparison either with Congress or with the Parliament of 
Australia. Proceedings are orderly: obstruction is seldom 
resorted to ; only in exciting times has there been any marked 
personal acrimony. That kindly bonhommie which is char- 
acteristic of Canadians generally maintains itself even in the 
political arena. 

The payment of members is inevitable in a country where 
there is practically no leisured class, and where most mem- 
bers coming from long distances to live in a city of only 
90,000 people, which is not a centre of commerce, must sac- 
rifice their business to their political duties. It has not 
produced a class of professional politicians. The salary is 
$2500 (£500) for a session exceeding thirty days, subject 
to a deduction of $15 a day for each day on which attend- 
ance is not given, a sum not large enough to draw a man into 
a parliamentary career, though it may sharpen his eager- 
ness to retain his seat. A feature in which Canada stands 
almost alone is the recognition of the leadership of the Op- 
position as a sort of public office, service in which is thought 
fit to be remunerated by a salary of $7000 (£1400) a year, 
the Speakers of the Senate and the House having each $4000, 
in addition to their allowance as Members of Parliament. 

The rules, based on English precedents, which regulate 
procedure on private bills have limited the field for " lobby- 
ing/' rendering it less general and pernicious than in the 
United States. There is nevertheless a good deal of job- 
bery and log-rolling in the Canadian Legislatures. It occurs 
frequently in connection with the granting of public money 
to localities, such grants being the means whereby a member 
commends himself to his constituents, while at the same time 
committing himself to a support of the Ministry which has 
conferred the favour on him and on them. Though trans- 
actions of this kind have lowered the standard of honour 
and the sense of public duty, they have not led to the grosser 
forms of political corruption, for these are as rare as in the 
United States Congress, while the Provincial Legislatures 
are probably purer than those of most American States, 
though the average virtue of members varies so much that 
it is hard to make any general statement. None sinks so 



480 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES: CANADA pam n 

low as do the Assemblies of New York or Pennsylvania, but 
the atmosphere of two or three is unwholesome ; and nowhere 
can absolute soundness be found. So far as one can ascer- 
tain, the level of honour in them and in the Parliament at 
Ottawa is below that exacted by public opinion from mem- 
bers of the Australian and New Zealand Legislatures. Prob- 
ably the temptations are greater, especially in the Provincial 
Legislatures, largely occupied with local matters involving 
pecuniary interests, and the proceedings in which receive 
comparatively little attention from the general public. 

From legislators in general we may proceed to those who 
have risen out of the crowd to be party leaders and Minis- 
ters. In Canada, as in England, political life is practically 
a parliamentary career which culminates in the Cabinet. 
There is little distinction or influence to be won in any other 
political field, though of course the heads of great banks or 
railroads, sometimes also those of great universities, may 
exercise quite as potent an influence. A man must begin 
by entering a legislative body and work his way up by prov- 
ing his quality there. Whoever shows unusual ability is, as 
in England, marked out for office and for place, so long as 
he can hold his seat, whereas in the United States a man 
may be summoned from the Bar or business to some exalted 
post and return to the Bar or business after four years with 
no prospect of further public service. It may, however, 
happen that an office requiring special knowledge or expe- 
rience is given to some one not in Parliament, and in that 
case a seat will be found for him or he will receive, as soon 
as a vacancy occurs, a place in the Senate carrying with it 
the prospect of office, so he seldom falls for long out of the 
running. Though eloquence and the tactful handling of 
men are, as by all Parliamentary Governments, valued more 
highly than administrative capacity, there is no lack of the 
latter quality. Such important departments as finance, jus- 
tice, agriculture, and fisheries are usually in competent 
hands. 

Describing these things by way of comparisons, which is 
the best way available, one may say that in every Canadian 
Cabinet there are two or three men equal to the average of 
a Cabinet in London or Washington, although the range of 
choice is naturally smaller in a smaller population. In the 



chap, xxxv LEGISLATIVE METHODS 481 

composition of a Ministry regard must be had not only to 
talent but also to the necessity for representing different 
parts of a vast area, both because this pleases the outlying 
Provinces, and because the national administration, being 
also the supreme council of the party in power, must be duly 
informed as to local political feeling as well as local eco- 
nomic conditions. 

The methods followed in legislation have been generally 
similar to those of the British Parliament, and here as there 
speaking has become plain and businesslike, with little 
rhetoric. At Ottawa, as at Westminster, the never-ending 
battle of the Ins and Outs has gone on, the Ministry pro- 
posing measures and the Opposition resisting them, the Min- 
istry taking steps and making appointments which the Op- 
position condemn as blunders or jobs. When there are no 
large issues of policy to divide the two parties, there are 
always questions of grants or subsidies or other administra- 
tive matters to furnish grounds for attack and recrimina- 
tion. Much time is thus lost, but the process is inevitable 
where office is the prize contended for, and where every mis- 
take brought home to the Government weakens its hold on 
the country and raises the hopes of the Opposition. It is 
moreover a necessary process, for if there were no fear of 
criticism and resistance who can tell how many more mis- 
takes might be made and jobs perpetrated with impunity? 
Canada, like Great Britain, imposes no constitutional re- 
strictions on the power of Parliament except those few con- 
tained in the Act of 1867, so the immense power possessed 
by an Administration backed by a majority would be abused 
if the right to interrogate and attack the Executive did not 
provide safeguards against the abuse of power equivalent, 
to, though different from, those which the scheme of Checks 
and Balances provides in the United States. Criticism is 
wholesome for Ministers, and gives a certain sense of security 
to the people, yet it is not a full security, any more than are 
the checks and balances. Although there exist in the Cana- 
dian Parliament and in the Provincial Legislatures rules, 
modelled on English precedents, regulating procedure in the 
case of those bills, which have a local or personal object, 
these rules are less effective than in England, because not 

supported by so strong a force of long habit and watched by 
VOL. i 21 



482 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : CANADA part n 

so vigilant an opinion. Many occasions arise for secret bar- 
gaining over bills as well as grants, many ways in which 
public interests may be sacrificed to projects promising pri- 
vate gain. 

Government is in Canada more concerned with matters 
affecting the development of the country than Europeans 
can realize. The dominance of material interests has brought 
into the field great corporate enterprises, such as lumber 
(timber) and mining and machine-making and fishery com- 
panies, and above all the railway companies. The great 
railway systems have been few but powerful, indeed all the 
more powerful because few. There has been much " trad- 
ing " between them and prominent politicians, for they need 
legislation, and in return for it they can influence votes at 
elections. An organization which has no politics except its 
own profits is formidable, and as an eminent Canadian has 
said, " Capital ends by getting its way." Some philosophic 
observers and some men of radical views have been alarmed. 
But the Canadian farmer is so eager for the extension of 
railroad facilities, and the man of business sees so clear a 
gain in the rapid development of the country's resources that 
there had been, down to 1914, comparatively little of that 
angry hostility to railroad corporations which had stirred 
the Western United States during the last thirty or forty 
years. At present, however, the tide of public opinion has 
begun to run more strongly than formerly against " Big 
Business." * 

These conditions, and especially this ardour, not alto- 
gether selfish, of every community to expand and to make 
the most of its resources faster than its neighbours, have 
made every district and town and village eager to get some- 
thing for itself. When the country began, about thirty 
years ago, to be settled more rapidly and thickly than before, 
roads were wanted, and bridges, and in some places har- 
bours or improvements in rivers, and everywhere railroads, 
for the proximity of a line opens up a district and makes 
the fortune of a town. As in each locality there was little 
or no capital even for bridge or road building, resort was 

i These lines describe things as they were before 1914. The taking 
over by the Dominion Government during the War, and the recent 
financial collapse of some important lines have so altered the situation 
that one must not venture to speak of the future. 



chap, xxxv MATEKIAL DEVELOPMENT 483 

had, and in some instances properly enough, to the public 
purse. The public purse once reached, and those ministers 
who held it finding no surer way of getting local votes than 
by obliging local applicants, it became the aim of every 
place and every member to dip as deep as possible into the 
National treasury. The habit was a demoralizing one all 
round. It intensified the spirit of localism which is as 
marked a feature in Canadian politics as it is in the United 
States, and for the same reasons. It lowered the standard 
of political thinking among the statesmen ; it turned the po- 
litical interest of the citizens away from the larger aspects 
of civic duty. These are phenomena which, though their 
beginnings are intelligible, surprise one in communities now 
so active and so prosperous as to be well able to tax them- 
selves for many purposes on which grants are lavished by 
the Dominion Government, grants often needless, for they 
are given only " to bring money into the town," and apt 
to be wastefully administered. But the habit persists, as 
it is found persisting in New Zealand also. 

What has been said of the Dominion House of Commons 
applies generally, allowing for their much smaller scale, to 
the Provincial Legislatures. They are divided upon the 
lines of the National parties, and upon these lines elections 
are chiefly fought, though with less heat than is shown in 
Federal contests, and with more frequent changes in the 
balance of party strength. The wide powers allotted to 
them by the Constitution, the only check upon which (save 
as regards education) lies in the power of disallowing their 
statutes reserved to the Dominion Government, are some- 
times not wisely used. Cases have occurred in which legis- 
lation has virtually extinguished private property without 
compensation, a thing forbidden to a State Legislature in 
the United States, and the Courts have held that such a law, 
however objectionable, is within their legal competence. 
Whether it furnishes ground for the exercise of the Do- 
minion disallowance has been doubled: but in a recent in- 
stance the propriety of that exercise has been affirmed by 
the Federal Government. 1 The methods and rules of pro- 

i See as to this interesting point, Mr. Justice KiddelPs Lectures on 
ike Constitution of Canada, pp. 98 and 112 and notes, and also an 
article by Mr. Murray Clark, K.C., in the Canadian Bankers' Magazine 
for Jan. 1919. 



484 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : CANADA pabt n 

cedure of these Provincial legislatures reproduce generally 
the practice of Westminster and of Ottawa. In them also 
the salutary principle that the public money can be voted 
only at the instance of the Executive holds good. 1 Author- 
ity is concentrated in the Legislature and Ministry, instead 
of being scattered among a number of directly elected offi- 
cials; full accounts of expenditure are presented; members 
can interrogate Ministers regarding every item. 

There are few Standing Committees, usually eight only; 
nor are there many private bills, circumstances which ex- 
plain the slight demand hitherto made in Canada for those 
institutions which have won so much favour in many States 
of the American Union, viz. the Popular Initiative in legis- 
lation, and the submission to a Referendum, or popular vote, 
of acts passed by the State Legislature. The chief sources 
of that demand are explained in the chapters relating to 
the United States, where it is shown that State legislatures 
have lost the confidence of the people because they pass many 
private acts for the benefit of the selfish interests of the 
rich, and omit to pass some acts desired by large sections 
of the people, at the bidding in both sets of cases of powerful 
rich men or companies. Hence the Referendum is applied 
to kill the " bad bills " and to pass those " good bills " which 
the legislature refuses to pass. In Canada this has hap- 
pened to a much smaller extent, because the rules of pro- 
cedure make it harder to play such tricks, because there is 
no powerful party machine by whose irresponsible control 
of a Legislature such bills can be put through, and because 
the majority, i.e. the Ministerial party, if it should try to 
oblige the " selfish interests " aforesaid, would have to bear 
the hostile criticism of an alert party Opposition. Assum- 
ing the level of public virtue to be much the same among 
the legislatures of the two countries there is this difference, 
that in an American State Legislature it is not the business 
of any one in particular to check and expose a jobbing bill, 
whereas in Canada — though it does sometimes happen that 
unscrupulous members of both parties agree to " put 

i In these and other respects Professor Henry Jones Ford compares 
the Provincial Legislatures with the State Legislatures in the United 
States, to the advantage of the former (North American Review, No. 
194 (1911)). 






chap, xxxv THE MONET POWEK 485 

through " a job — the leaders of an Opposition have a con- 
stantly operating personal motive for detecting and de- 
nouncing the misdeeds of any Ministry which should be- 
come the tool of rapacious wealth. Apart, however, from 
private bills there are sundry ways in which the Money 
Power can pursue its ends by obtaining benefits from rep- 
resentatives or ministries, sometimes through legislation, 
sometimes through the disposal of contracts or concessions. 
Suspicion has been rife as to the influence which the owners 
or promoters of large business enterprises can put forth in 
these directions, and enough has been unearthed to justify 
suspicion. Most Canadians say that although these evils 
are not new they have grown with the growth of the coun- 
try, but at the same time express the belief, or at least the 
hope, that the fuller attention recently given to them will 
lead to their extinction. 

The whole of the higher judiciary in Canada acts under 
Federal authority, although the administration of justice 
is left to the Provincial governments. Both the judges of 
the Supreme Court of the Dominion and those of the Pro- 
vincial Courts are appointed by the Dominion Executive, 
and are selected from the Bar, the police magistrates only 
being appointed by the Provincial Governments. Men who 
have made their mark in politics are, as in England, some- 
times chosen, but this, if it sometimes places second-rate men 
where first-rate men should be, has not injured the impar- 
tiality of the Bench, for though a man may owe his appoint- 
ment to political party influences he ceases to be a politician 
so soon as he takes his seat, having no promotion to work for, 
and knowing his post to be secure so long as he does his 
duty faithfully. English practice has also been followed 
in making appointments for life (subject to a power of re- 
moval on an address by both Houses of the Dominion Par- 
liament), but the salaries assigned even to the High Court 
Bench, ranging from $7000 to $8000 (with $10,000 for the 
Chief Justice of the Dominion), though sufficient to secure 
men of learning and ability, do not always attract the lead- 
ers of the Bar. The Courts have, as sound principle re- 
quires wherever a legislature is restricted in its powers by 
the provisions of a constitution enacted by superior author- 



486 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : CANADA pabt ii 

ity, 1 the function of passing judgment on the constitutional- 
ity of statutes; but it is a function of less scope and less 
difficulty than in the United States, because practically the 
only questions that arise relate to the respective competence 
of Federal Courts and Provincial Courts as defined in the 
Canadian Constitution of 1867. Moreover, the final deci- 
sion in such cases belongs to the Judicial Committee of the 
Privy Council in England as the ultimate Court of appeal 
in suits brought from the Dominion, or from the highest 
Provincial Courts. No such complaints as have been made 
in the United States regarding the cutting down of statutes 
by judicial decisions are heard in Canada, and this may be 
one reason why no one suggests popular election as a proper 
mode of choosing judges. 

The respect felt for the judiciary contributes to that strict 
ministration of the civil law which are honourable charac- 
teristics of Canada. Lynch law is all but unknown. The 
enforcement of the criminal as well as to that impartial ad- 
only recent breaches of public order serious enough to rouse 
alarm were those which occurred during the great strike at 
Winnipeg in 1919, and they are attributed chiefly to the 
presence of a mass of recent immigrants from the backward 
parts of Eastern Europe. The disorders of mining camps, 
once so common in the western United States, are not seen: 
nor have bands of robbers infested even the wilder districts, 
for the Dominion Government has maintained there a force 
of mounted police whose efficiency has been the admiration 
of all travellers, and the officers of which have been allowed 
— without complaints from the inhabitants — to exercise 
pretty wide semi-judicial as well as executive powers. Such 
of the aboriginal Indian tribes as remain in the North- 
West and in British Columbia have been on the whole hu- 
manely and judiciously treated, with few occasions for the 
employment of armed force, and with few or none of those 
administrative abuses which the United States Government 
found it during many years impossible to prevent or cure, 
because the administrative posts were so frequently given, 
by way of political patronage, to incompetent or untrust- 

i This principle is, however, not followed in Switzerland nor indeed 
fully recognized by most lawyers of the European Continent. See 
Chapter XXVIII. p. 401, ante. 



chap, xxxv JUSTICE AND ORDER 487 

worthy men. Nothing has been more creditable to Canada 
than the maintenance of so high a standard of law and 
order over its vast territory. Here, as in Australia, the 
people are not jealous of executive authority, because Eng- 
lishmen have been long accustomed to see it exercised under 
parliamentary supervision. 

Of Local Government not much need be said, because it 
presents few features of special interest. National politics 
have fortunately not been allowed to enter into the elections 
of the local councils, in which the chief aim is to find the 
best men of the neighbourhood. The rural schools are hon- 
estly but rather too parsimoniously managed : the towns pay 
the teachers better and maintain a creditable level of instruc- 
tion. As regards the smaller municipalities the same holds 
generally true. In the large cities the conditions are differ- 
ent, and approach those which afflict the great cities of the 
United States. Where there are large sums to be spent and 
to be raised by taxation, large contracts to be placed, large 
opportunities for land speculation offered by the making of 
city improvements, and where the bulk of the voters have no 
interest in economical administration, abuses must be ex- 
pected. Though there is in a few large cities some jobbery, 
the only grave scandals have occurred in Montreal, where 
about ten years ago peculation on a great scale was brought 
home to the municipal authorities. Toronto has a toler- 
ably good record: so have Winnipeg and Vancouver. The 
local party organization sometimes takes a hand in the elec- 
tion of councillors by putting forward men who have served 
it, but the voters do not follow slavishly, for their chief de- 
sire is to find honest and capable men. It will be remem- 
bered that there is not in Canada, not even in the cities, a 
powerful party machine for choosing candidates, and that 
there are no administrative officers directly elected by the 
people except, in many towns, the Mayor. 



CHAPTER XXXVI 

THE ACTION OF PUBLIC OPINION 

In estimating the volume and force of public opinion in 
Canada as compared with European countries and the United 
States, one must remember that vast as the country is, its 
population has not yet reached nine millions, that there are 
only three or four cities large enough to contain a society 
of highly educated men who can give a lead in political 
thinking, and that only three or four universities have as 
yet risen to that front rank which is represented in Britain 
by nine or ten and in the United States by more than double 
that number. There is, moreover, a deep cleft which sep- 
arates the French-speaking Roman Catholic element, most 
of it under ecclesiastical influences, from the other elements 
in the nation, so that on nearly all non-economic subjects 
divergences must be expected, for where fundamental ideas 
and habits of thought are concerned, the French mind and 
the British mind do not move on the same lines, even when 
both may arrive at similar practical conclusions. One can- 
not talk of a general opinion of the whole people as one can 
for most purposes in Great Britain, and could in Australia 
till the rise of the Labour party. As a set-off to this dis- 
advantage there has been, until recently, little in the way 
of class opinion, the native Canadian wage-earners having 
been moved by much the same sentiments as the farmers 
and traders, neither of the two great parties any more than 
the other identified with the interests of the rich or of the 
poor, and neither seriously accused, whatever imputations 
may be launched during election campaigns, of being the 
permanent friend or tool of capitalists. Most of those ques- 
tions of material development which fill so large a place in 
men's thoughts, find favour or arouse hostility as they affect 
one particular region of the country, so that upon only a 

few of them can any common or national view be looked for. 

488 



chap, xxxvi PUBLIC OPINION 489 

Comparing Canadian opinion with that of the country 
which most resembles it in economic conditions as well as 
in democratic sentiment, it is to be noted that whereas in 
the United States there is much discontent with the working 
of some institutions, such as the system of elections, the con- 
duct of the Legislatures and the political machine, and the 
reforming spirit is evoked by a sense of faults which have 
to be cured, no similar discontent took shape till it found 
voice recently in the Farmers' movement in Canada. The 
legislative and administrative machinery had been working 
smoothly, if not always creditably, and such dissatisfaction 
as arose impugned not the machinery but the men who 
worked it. Scarcely any one proposed constitutional changes. 
The self-governing powers of the Dominion have so long been 
admitted by the Mother Country that most Canadians, wel- 
coming the fuller recognition given, especially in the negotia- 
tion and signing of the Treaties of 1919 and 1920, to the 
right of their Government to be consulted in and express its 
views upon all matters affecting the policy of the British 
Empire as a whole, see no need for altering the present con- 
stitutional relations, loose and undefined as they are, of the 
different parts of that Empire. Such large issues as those 
of State interference with private enterprise, of the respec- 
tive merits of State or private owned railroads, of subsidies 
to steamship lines, of the regulation of immigration, espe- 
cially as regards Oriental races, are discussed not on grounds 
of general principle, but rather on the merits of any par- 
ticular proposal made. Few people stop to think of the 
principles. What interests them is the concrete instance, 
and it would be deemed pedantic to suggest that an appar- 
ent immediate benefit should be foregone lest deviation from 
principle should set a dangerous precedent. The press is 
ably conducted, and exerts quite as much influence as in the 
United States, but the daily newspapers, even those who 
speak with authority for their party, have only a slender 
circulation outside their Provinces, so great are the dis- 
tances which separate the populous towns. When any grave 
scandal is brought to light, either in an abuse of its patron- 
age by the Dominion Government or in some unsavoury 
job committed by one of the Provincial administrations, 
there is an outcry in the press, and the people put a bad 



490 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : CANADA part ii 

mark against the peccant Minister, perhaps even against 
the Cabinet of which he is a member, for the people are 
sound, and hate corruption in whatever form it appears. 
But they do not see how such things are to be prevented, 
even by the dismissal of the particular offender, for the 
fault lies in the men, not in the institutions; so they await 
the next elections as a means of giving effect to their dis- 
pleasure, though with no confident hope that those whom 
the next elections instal in power will be better than their 
predecessors. Thus there had not arisen before 1914 what 
could be called any general Keforming movement with a 
definite programme. Public sentiment has, however, since 
then enforced one considerable reform, viz. the extension of 
the Civil Service laws to cover nearly all offices, and thereby 
virtually extinguish political patronage. 

The people watch what goes on in the Parliament at Ot- 
tawa and in their Provincial Legislatures with as much at- 
tention as can perhaps be expected from a busy men in a 
swiftly advancing country, and they show an abounding 
party spirit when an election day arrives. The constant 
party struggle keeps their interest alive. But party spirit, 
so far from being a measure of the volume of political 
thinking, may even be a substitute for thinking. A foreign 
critic who asks, as some have done, why the spirit of reform 
may seem to have lagged, or flagged, in Canada may be re- 
minded of three facts. One is that the evils which rouse 
the reformers to action, such as has been taken, have usually 
been flagrant, more destructive of true democracy than have 
been the faults of which Canadians complain. A second is 
that in Canada, where the population is small in proportion 
to the territory, that section of the citizens which is best 
educated and has leisure for watching and reflecting on the 
events of politics has been extremely small, scarcely to be 
found except in a very few urban centres ; and a third is that 
these centres are widely removed from one another, with 
thinly peopled tracts interposed. Toronto and the towns to 
tho west of it form one such centre, Ottawa and Montreal 
another. Quebec stands detached to the east; Winnipeg is 
far away to the North-West, Vancouver and Victoria still 
farther off on the shores of the Pacific. Most of these cities 
are of recent growth, and in each of them the number of 



chap, xxxvi PRESENT PROBLEMS 491 

persons qualified to form and guide opinion is not large. 
The public opinion they create is fragmentary ; it wants that 
cohesion which is produced by a constant interchange of 
ideas between those who dwell near one another; it is with 
difficulty organized to form an effective force. Here, how- 
ever, time must work for good. The volume of serious 
political thinking in Canada may be expected to increase 
steadily with the growth of the leisured class; with the de- 
velopment of the Universities, already gaining more hold on 
the country; with the increasing numbers and influence of 
the younger and progressive section of the western farmers, 
half of them, it is said, university graduates; with the pres- 
ence of a larger number of men of a high type in the Legis- 
latures; and with a sense among all thoughtful citizens that 
the problems, especially the social and economic problems, 
which confront them in our day require more exact and pro- 
found study than they have yet received. 

Here we get down to bed-rock : here the question arises, 
Is it a fault characteristic of popular government that the 
problems referred receive insufficient study, seeing that in 
such a government as Canada possesses every opportunity 
exists for the men the country needs to show their capacity 
and make their way into parliaments and ministries, and 
seeing also that the nation, not distracted by questions of 
foreign policy and having long ago settled all the constitu- 
tional controversies, is free to bend its mind upon domestic 
questions ? Has Canada been behind other countries in 
dealing with social reforms, with labour controversies, 
with tariffs, with the systematic development of national 
resources ? 

I will try to answer this by observing that the most burn- 
ing of social reforms, that of the sale of intoxicants, has 
been dealt with, because public opinion took hold of the mat- 
ter and did not wait for party politicians to trifle with it, 
and that to the adjustment of labour disputes Canada has 
made one of the best contributions of recent years in an Act 
prescribing enquiry and delay when strikes are threatened. 
The tariff is being still fought over, but so it is in many 
States, and Canada is so far not behind any other English- 
speaking country. But it must be admitted that the right 
method of conserving and developing natural resources 



492 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : CANADA part 11 

either has not yet been found or that it has not been properly 
put in practice, though no subject is more essential to the 
welfare of a new country. Here the problem is threefold. 
The aims generally sought have been (a) to provide the 
maximum of facilities for turning forests and minerals to 
the best account, and for the transportation of products; 
(&) to prevent the absorption by speculators, for their own 
gain, of these and other sources of natural wealth; (c) to 
secure for the nation, so far as can be done without checking 
individual enterprise, the so-called " unearned increment " 
or additional value which land, minerals, and water power 
acquire from the general growth of population and pros- 
perity. The pursuit of these three aims raises difficult ques- 
tions as to the principles which ought to be laid down, ques- 
tions which demand the patient thought and wide knowledge 
of the ablest minds that a government can enlist for the 
purpose. The application of these principles to a series of 
concrete cases must be entrusted to men of practical gifts, 
with clear heads and business experience, and with proved 
integrity also, for temptations arise on every side. Neither 
the eloquence of a debater nor the arts of the political in- 
triguer are in place. But the British parliamentary system 
as worked in the self-governing Dominions is not calculated 
to find the men most needed. The talents it brings to the 
front are of a different order, and if men of the gifts spe- 
cially required are found in a ministry, this will generally 
happen by a lucky chance. Canadian politicians have not, 
any more than those of Australia and the United States, 
searched for such men, and taken pains to stock the public 
service with them. The principles to be adopted would of 
course require the approval of the legislature, but political 
pressure ought not to be allowed to disturb their systematic 
and consistent application. So long as these matters are 
left to the chances of rough and tumble parliamentary de- 
bate or to be settled by secret bargaining between ministers, 
members, and " the interests," there will be losses to the 
nation as well as ground for the suspicions to which poli- 
ticians are now exposed. 

As it is one of the most interesting features of the polit- 
ical system of Canada that in it institutions thoroughly Eng- 
lish have been placed in a physical and economic environ- 



chap, xxxvi CANADA AND U. S. COMPARED 493 

ment altogether unlike that of England and almost identical 
with that of the Northern United States, and as the political 
phenomena of Canada and those of the United States illus- 
trate one another in many points, it is worth while to sum- 
marize here the main points in which the institutions and 
the practices of the latter country differ from those of the 
no less democratic government of Canada. 

The States of the American Union have wider powers 
than those of the Canadian Provinces, for the Constitutions 
of the Union and of the States impose restrictions on the 
National and the State Legislatures, whereas in Canada 
there are no such restrictions, except those which arise from 
the division in the Federal Constitution of functions be- 
tween the Dominion and the Provinces. 

The President of the United States has a veto upon the 
acts of Congress. There is (in practice) no similar veto on 
the acts of the Dominion Parliament. 

The Senate is in the United States the more powerful of 
the two Houses of the Legislature. The Canadian Senate 
exerts little power. 

The State Governor has in nearly all of the States a veto 
on the acts of his Legislature. The Lieutenant-Governor of 
a Province has no veto, and the power of disallowance vested 
in the Dominion Government is exercised rarely and only 
in very special cases. 

In every American State the judges of the higher Courts 
are either (in a very few States) appointed by the Governor 
or elected by the Legislature, or else (in the great majority 
of States) elected by the people. In the Canadian Provinces 
they are all appointed by the Dominion Government. 

In each of the American States some administrative of- 
fices are filled by direct popular election. In the Canadian 
Provinces all such offices are filled by appointment, nom- 
inally by the Lieutenant-Governor, practically by the Pro- 
vincial Ministry, and the only elections (besides the munici- 
pal) are those held for the choice of representatives. 

In the United States all elective offices, National and 
State, are held for a fixed term. In Canada posts in the 
civil service, except those very few whose occupants change 
with a change of government, are held for life, subject to 
dismissal for fault or incompetence. 



494 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : CANADA part ii 

In many States of the Union the people vote directly on 
projects of legislation by means of the Popular Initiative 
and the Popular Keferendum on bills passed by the Legis- 
lature, and in some they may vote also for the dismissal or 
retention of officials, by the Popular Recall. In Canada 
the Constitutions do not provide for a direct voting by the 
people on such matters. 

In the United States all Legislatures are elected for a 
fixed term, and cannot be dissolved before it expires. In 
Canada they may be dissolved by the Executive Ministry 
before the legal term expires. 

In the United States the principle of the Division of 
Powers between the three Departments (Legislative, Execu- 
tive, and Judicial) is recognized and to a large extent car- 
ried out. In Canada the Executive and Legislative are 
closely associated. 

As a result of this difference, Responsibility is in Canada 
more concentrated and is more definitely fixed upon a small 
number of persons than it is in the United States. In Can- 
ada, both in the Dominion and in the Provinces, Power rests 
with and Responsibility attaches to the Cabinet. In the 
United States, Power and Responsibility are divided be- 
tween the Executive (President or State Governor) and the 
Legislature. 

In the United States Federal Government the Cabinet are 
merely the President's servants. In the States of the Union 
the Governor has no Cabinet and advisers such as the Lieu- 
tenant-Governor has in a Canadian Province. 

In the United States no Federal official can sit in Con- 
gress, no State official in a State Legislature. In Canada 
Federal Ministers sit in the Dominion, and Provincial MiB- 
isters in the Provincial legislatures. 

To these constitutional contrasts let us add three other 
differences of high significance in practice. 

There is in Canada no party organization comparable, in 
strength and its wide extension over the whole field of poli- 
tics, to that which exists in the party Machines of the United 
States. 

The only Canadian elections fought on party lines are 
those to the Dominion Parliament and to the Provincial 



chap. xxxvi CANADA AND U. S. COMPAKED 495 

Legislatures. Local government elections usually turn upon 
local issues or the personal merits of candidates. 

Such influence, now greatly reduced by the creation of 
the Civil Service Commission, as the Canadian Executive 
possesses over the bestowal of posts in the public services 
applies only to appointment in the first instance. Officials 
are not dismissed on party grounds to make way for persons 
with party claims, i.e. there is no " Spoils System." 

Viewed as a whole, the government of Canada, although 
nominally monarchical, is rather more democratic than that 
of the United States. No single man enjoys so much power 
as the President during his four years, for the Prime Min- 
ister of the Dominion is only the head of his Cabinet, and 
though, if exceptionally strong in character and in his hold 
over his majority in Parliament, he may exert greater power 
than does a President confronted by a hostile Congress, still 
he is inevitably influenced by his Cabinet and can seldom 
afford to break with it, or even with its more important 
members, while both he and they are liable to be dismissed 
at any moment by Parliament. The voters are in the United 
States more frequently summoned to act, but in Canada their 
power, when they do act at an election, is legally boundless, 
for their representatives are subject to no such restrictions 
as American Constitutions impose. Were there any revolu- 
tionary spirit abroad in Canada, desiring to carry sweeping 
changes by a sudden stroke, these could be carried swiftly by 
Parliamentary legislation. 

In winding up this comparison let us pause to note 
another difference between the United States and Canada 
which has some historical interest. In the former there has 
been from early days an almost superstitious devotion to the 
idea of popular sovereignty, and at some moments enthusi- 
asm for it has risen so high as to make every plan which 
invokes the direct action of the people act like a spell. In 
Canada the actual power of the people is just as effective, 
and the same praises of the people's wisdom are addressed 
to the people by every orator with a like air of conviction. 
But in Canada neither the idea in theory nor its application 
in the incessant exercise of voting power has possessed any 
special fascination. The Canadians have never, like their 



496 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : CANADA pabt n 

neighbours to the south, fallen under the influence of this 
or any other abstract idea. They are quite content to be 
free and equal, and masters of their fate, without talking 
about Liberty and Equality. Having complete control of 
their administrations through their legislatures, they are 
therewith content. Popular sovereignty receives here, as 
in every democracy, all the lip service it can desire, But 
it is not a self-assertive, obtrusive, gesticulative part of the 
national consciousness. 



CHAPTER XXXVII 

GENERAL REVIEW OF CANADIAN POLITICS 

To say that a Government is democratic through and 
through is not to say that it is free from defects. Of those 
which appear in Canada, some may be set down to the 
newness of tho country, and others either to the form of 
the institutions or to those faults in their working which 
spring from the permanent weaknesses of human nature. 

Taken as a whole, the institutions are well constructed, 
being in the main such as long experience has approved in 
Britain. Canada has made the first attempt to apply the 
Parliamentary system to a Federation; Australia and South 
Africa have followed. The experiment has been successful, 
for the machinery has worked pretty smoothly. Though 
some say that the Provincial Governments, each in the pur- 
suit of its local interests, try to encroach on the Dominion 
sphere, while others complain that ten Legislatures and 
Cabinets, each with its administrative staff, are too many 
for a population of less than eight and a half millions, yet 
it must be remembered how difficult it would be to govern 
from any single centre regions so far apart and so physically 
dissimilar as the Maritime Provinces, the East Central Prov- 
inces, the Western Prairie Provinces, and British Columbia 
beyond the barrier of the Rocky Mountains. 

Upon the working of the institutions, however, both of 
the Dominion Government and of the Provincial Govern- 
ments each in its own sphere, divers criticisms may be made 
which need to be enumerated. 

(1) There has been bribery at elections, though exten- 
sions of the suffrage have latterly reduced it, and from time 
to time and in some districts, a recourse to election frauds. 
Few elections — so it is believed — would stand if either 
party pressed the law against its opponents. Large sums 
are spent in contests, illegally as well as legally; Govern- 
ment contractors and persons interested in tariff legislation 
vol. i 497 2 K 



498 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : CANADA paet 11 

contributing to campaign funds, and until the days of Pro- 
hibition liquor flowed freely at the expense of candidates 
or their friends. 

(2) How much corruption there is among legislators it 
is hard to discover, probably less than is alleged, but doubt- 
less more than is ever proved. Members rarely sell their 
votes, though a good many may be influenced by the pros- 
pect of some advantage to themselves if they support a cer- 
tain Bill or use their influence to secure an appointment or 
recommend a contract. Two or three Provincial Legisla- 
tures enjoy a permanently low reputation: in the others 
scandals are more sporadic, while the Dominion Parlia- 
ment maintains a passably good level. 

(3) Suspicion has from time to time attached to Minis- 
ters in the Dominion as well as in Provincial Cabinets. 
Charges have been brought of the abuse of official position 
for purposes of personal gain, which, though seldom estab- 
lished, have obtained sufficient credence to discredit the 
persons accused and weaken the Administrations of which 
they were members, the heads of which were thought too 
lenient in not cutting off those branches which were becom- 
ing unhealthy. Calumny has never assailed any Prime 
Minister. Sir John Macdonald was blamed and forced to 
resign for having received from a great railway company 
large contributions to party funds, alleged to have been 
given in return for benefits to be conferred on it, but he 
never took anything for himself, and grew no richer through 
office. 

The position may be compared with that seen in the 
United States for some years after the Civil War, when 
scandals were frequent, though they were both more frequent 
and grosser in scale than they are now in Canada, and 
when public opinion, though shocked, was yet not greatly 
shocked, because familiarity was passing into an acquies- 
cence in what seemed the inevitable. However, tnings 
slowly improved, and the public conscience became as sensi- 
tive as it is now in New Zealand and was in England from 
1832 till 1914. So it may become in Canada when the 
pace of material growth slackens, when temptations are less 
insistent, and men cease to palliate the peccadilloes of those 
who are " developing the resources of the country." 



chap, xxxvn CRITICISMS OF GOVERNMENT 499 

(4) The power of large financial and commercial inter- 
ests over legislation and administration has at times been 
so marked as to provoke a reaction; so public opinion now 
looks askance at the great Companies, and sometimes deals 
rather hardly with them. 

(5) There is, especially in the Dominion Parliament, 
which has larger funds to handle, plenty of that form of 
jobbery which consists in allotting grants of public money 
to localities with a view to winning political support for 
the local member or for his party. 1 

(6) The intrusion of National party issues into Provin- 
cial Legislatures has resulted in lowering the quality of 
those bodies, because persons who would not be chosen by the 
voters on their merits are supported as " good party men," 
and because their colleagues of the same party are apt to 
stand by them when they attempt jobs, or are arraigned for 
jobs committed. 

(7) There is, as in all democratic countries, lavish ex- 
penditure and waste. The insistence of members who want 
something for their friends or constituencies, and the mul- 
tiplication of offices in order to confer favours, 2 are the un- 
ceasing foes of economy, while the prosperity of the coun- 
try makes the people splendidly heedless. 

(8) The permanent Civil Service, though not inefficient, 
and containing some few admirable scientific experts, has 
not risen to the level of modern requirements, because too 
little care was taken to secure high competence, and favour 
prevailed even where special capacity was needed, affecting 
promotions as well as appointments at entrance. There has 
not yet been time to test the working of the recently created 
Civil Service Commission. 

(9) The career of politics does not draw to itself enough 
of the best talent of the nation. This defect is often re- 
marked elsewhere, as in Australia, France, and the United 
States, but in the last-named country there are obstacles to 
be overcome which Canada does not present, viz. the power 
of the nominating party Machine, and the habit of choosing 
as representatives none but residents in the district. In 

i This is called in the U.S.A. the " Pork Barrel." It is common in 
New Zealand also, and not infrequent in France. 
2 This is complained of in France also (gee Chapter XX, ante). 



500 ACTUAL DEMOCEACIES: CANADA pabt ii 

Canada the attractive opportunities opened to ambition by 
other careers partly account for the phenomenon, the gen- 
eral causes of which all over the world will be discussed in 
a later Chapter (Part III.). 

(10) That decline in the quality of members of which 
Canadians complain has helped to create, here as elsewhere, 
a certain want of dignity in the public life of a nation that 
has already risen to greatness. The imputations which 
party violence scatters loosely even against men of spotless 
character must not be taken too seriously: they do not ex- 
clude a large measure of good nature and kindly personal 
intercourse. But they lower the tone of politics, and affect 
the respect of the citizens for the men who direct the affairs 
of State, bringing those affairs down to the level of that 
type of business life in which a man's only motive is as- 
sumed to be the making of a good bargain for himself. 

Against these criticisms, which have been stated as nearly 
as possible in the way I have heard them made in Canada, 
there are to be set certain main ends and purposes of gov- 
ernment which democracy has in Canada attained. 

Law and order are fully secured everywhere, even in the 
wildest parts of the West. There is no lynching, and there 
had been, till the Winnipeg strike of 1919, hardly any un- 
lawful action in labour troubles, on the part either of 
strikers or of employers. Civil administration goes on 
smoothly in all the Provinces. 

The permanent Civil Service of the Dominion is, taken 
as a whole, honest, fairly competent, and not given to bu- 
reaucratic ways. 

The judiciary is able and respected. Criminal justice 
is dispensed promptly, efficiently, and impartially. 

The secondary schools and the elementary schools in the 
towns are excellent, and particular care has been bestowed 
on the provision for scientific instruction in agriculture. 

Legislation of a public nature is as a rule well considered 
and well drafted. The finances of the Dominion, apart 
from those grants to localities already referred to, have been 
managed with ability though not with economy. National 
credit stands high, and taxation is not oppressive, having 
regard to the capacity of the people to bear it. No abuses 



chap, xxxvn MEEITS OF GOVEKNMENT 501 

have arisen comparable to those which Pension laws have 
led to in the United States. 

There are those who regard the prohibition of the sale 
of intoxicants as an inroad upon individual liberty, however 
great the benefit to the community. Apart from that con- 
troversial matter, the citizen is nowhere, not even in Britain 
and the United States, better guaranteed in the enjoyment 
of his private civil rights. The Executive interferes as lit- 
tle as possible with him. Neither does public opinion. 

A government may deserve to be credited not only with 
the positive successes it has achieved, but with the negative 
success of having escaped evils that have vexed other na- 
tions living under somewhat similar conditions. A few of 
these may be mentioned. 

Demagogism is supposed to be a malady incident to de- 
mocracies. Canada has suffered from it less than any other 
modern free country except Switzerland. Some of her 
statesmen have been not over-scrupulous, some have deserted 
sound principles for the sake of scoring a temporary tri- 
umph, but few have played down to the people by lavish 
promises or incitements to passion. 

Strong as party spirit has been, party organization has 
not grown to be, as in the United States, a secret power 
bringing the legal government into subjection for its selfish 
purposes. 

Municipal administration, though in some cities extrava- 
gant, has been in most of them tolerably honest and efficient, 
not perhaps as pure as in English, Scottish, or Australian 
towns, but purer than in the cities of the United States, and 
than in some at least of those of France. 

The spirit of licence, a contempt of authority, a negligence 
in enforcing the laws, have been so often dwelt upon as 
characteristic of democracies that their absence from Can- 
ada is a thing of which she may well be proud. To what 
shall we ascribe the strength of the Executive, the efficiency 
of the police, the strict application of criminal justice, the 
habit of obedience to the law? Partly no doubt to the 
quality of the population, both Erench-speaking and English- 
speaking; but largely also to British traditions. The habit 
was formed under governments that were in those days 



502 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : CANADA part ii 

monarchical in fact as well as in name, and it has persisted. 
Though it is often said that the law is strongest when the 
people feel it to be of their own making — and the maxim 
is true of Switzerland — there is also another aspect of the 
matter. The sentiment of deference to legal authority, 
planted deep in days when that authority was regarded with 
awe as having an almost sacred sanction, has lived on into 
a time when the awe and sacredness have departed, and 
rooted itself in the British self-governing Dominions. It 
was in England never a slavish sentiment, for the citizen 
looked to and valued the law as granting protection while it 
demanded obedience. This is not the only point in which 
the Common Law of England has resembled the law of Re- 
publican Rome. Both, while they enforced submission to 
duly constituted authority, gave a legal guarantee to the 
individual citizen for the defence of his personal rights 
against any form of State power, always associating Liberty 
with Law. 

The student of Canadian affairs who compares what Ca- 
nadians have accomplished in developing by their own en- 
ergy the material resources of their magnificent country, 
creating in many districts a wealth and prosperity which 
amazes those who remember what seemed the stagnation of 
half a century ago, feels some disappointment when he sur- 
veys the field of politics. Struck by the advantages which 
popular government enjoys in a country whose people, ex- 
ceptionally industrious, intelligent, and educated, have a 
vast area of fertile land at their disposal, and enjoy the 
comforts of life in far larger measure than do the inhabitants 
of war-wearied and impoverished Europe, he expects to find 
democratic government free from the evils that have impeded 
its path in the Old World. Here, where there are no mem- 
ories of past wrongs, no dangers to be feared from foreign 
enemies, no lack of employment, no misery or other ground 
for class hatreds, ought there not to be honest and efficient 
administration, general confidence in the government and 
contentment with the course which public policy has fol- 
lowed? These things, however, he does not find. He does 
indeed find much to admire and to rejoice at, yet the people, 
proud as they are of their country, are dissatisfied with their 
legislatures and their ministries. There is an unmistakable 



chap, xxxvn CAUSES OF DISSATISFACTION 503 

malaise, a feeling that something is wrong, even among those 
who are not prepared to say where the cause lies. 

We are apt to expect public as well as private virtue wher- 
ever the conditions of life are simple; and it would be a 
pity if this amiable presumption in favour of human nature 
were to vanish away. But do the facts warrant the pre- 
sumption ? A virgin soil just cleared of trees may be made 
to wave with wheat, but it may also cover itself with a 
luxuriant growth of weeds. 

The difficulties due to the differences of race and re- 
ligion in the population do not explain this discontent, for 
those differences have not corresponded with party divisions 
and have not prevented the growth of an ardent national pa- 
triotism in both races. When on festive occasions one hears 
the English-speaking Canadian singing " The Maple Leaf," 
and the French-speaking Canadian the softer and sweeter 
air " O Canada, mon pays, mes amours," one perceives they 
are both alike expressions of devotion to Canada, and of 
sanguine hopes for a happy future. Whatever political dif- 
ficulties may arise in the Dominion Government from the 
necessity of keeping the two racial and religious elements 
in good humour do not arise in Provinces where one or 
other element is entirely preponderant. Administrative 
errors, financial waste, the rather low tone of public life in 
three or four Provinces, cannot be thus accounted for; and 
they are the same defects that are complained of in Domin- 
ion Government. May there not, however, be certain con- 
ditions incident to a new country which help to explain 
the dissatisfaction which seems to be felt by thoughtful 
Canadians ? 

The charge most frequently brought against Canadian 
statesmen is that of Opportunism. It is a word which may 
be used, with no dyslogistic implication, to describe the ac- 
tion of a statesman who finds himself obliged to postpone 
measures which he thinks more important to others which 
he thinks less important, because he can carry the latter and 
cannot carry the former. In politics one must use the flow- 
ing tide, one must turn to the best account a people's fluc- 
tuating moods. But the term is more frequently meant to 
impute to a politician the absence of convictions, or at any 
rate of any fixed policy based upon principle, a trimming of 



504 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : CANADA part h 

the sails to catch every passing breeze so as to retain office 
by making the most of whatever chance of support may come 
from any quarter. If this latter kind of Opportunism has 
been frequent in Canada and has told unfavourably upon 
its public life a reason is not far to seek. Since 1867 the 
large and permanent issues of policy, such as that of Protec- 
tion against Free Trade, have been comparatively few, and 
have sometimes been allowed to slumber; and in their ab- 
sence the smaller but nearer issues by which votes are cap- 
tured have occupied the field. Such were questions relating 
to public works, including that of transportation facilities, 
particularly by the construction and financing of railways. 
To a country of vast spaces like Canada canals and such 
facilities are of supreme importance, but they are treated as 
questions not so much of principle as of practical needs, in- 
volving the claims of different localities in which local wishes 
have to be regarded. There have been many occasions in 
other ways also in which questions of material benefit to a 
district, or a city, or a great undertaking, or a strong finan- 
cial group came before ministries and legislatures, As the 
country grew, demands for assistance from public funds 
went on growing, and those who planned enterprises for 
their own gain had occasions for securing benevolent help, 
or acquiescence, on the part of Government, whether Federal 
or Provincial. Administrations placed in the middle of this 
struggle for favours demanded by the representatives of the 
districts affected, used their opportunities to strengthen them- 
selves in the country and make sure of seats that had been 
doubtful, while now and then individual ministers as well 
as members were not above turning to personal account the 
knowledge or the influence they possessed. In every country 
a game played over material interests between ministers, con- 
stituencies and their representatives, railway companies and 
private speculators is not only demoralizing to all concerned, 
but interferes with the consideration of the great issues of 
policy on a wise handling of which a nation's welfare de- 
pends. Fiscal questions, labour questions, the assumption 
by the State of such branches of industry as railroads or 
mines and the principles it ought to follow in such work as 
it undertakes — questions like these need wide vision, clear 
insight, and a firmness that will resist political pressure and 



chap, xxxvii MATERIAL INTERESTS 505 

adhere to the principles once laid down. These qualities 
have been wanting, and the people have begun to perceive 
the want. In the older countries of Europe there is a body 
of trained opinion, capable of criticizing and more or less 
even of controlling the action of Governments, and the upper 
ranks of the Civil Service are a reservoir of knowledge and 
experience upon which ministers can draw. Canadian min- 
istries enjoy these advantages in slighter measure, and the 
element of educated opinion is dispersed over an enormous 
country in cities far from the Federal capital and far also 
from one another. That opinion has not been strong enough 
nor concentrated enough to keep legislators and adminis- 
trators up to the mark in efficiency or in a sense of public 
duty. 

This last-named function may seem incumbent not on the 
few but on the many, that is on the great mass of honest 
and sensible citizens. But how are they placed? The 
worthy hard-working farmer in Ontario or Alberta reads 
in his newspaper attacks on Ministerial jobs, but as the 
newspaper of the opposite party denies or explains away the 
facts, he does not know what to believe. The seat of his 
Provincial legislature is far off, and Ottawa still further. 
If some gross blunder or crying scandal is brought home he 
may punish the offending Ministry by voting against it when 
next he gets the chance, but the candidate for whom he votes 
may be no better than the member his vote rejects, and may 
support a Ministry of no whiter a hue. 

In every country, whatever its form of government, and 
where a rapid exploitation of natural resources drags ad- 
ministrators and legislators to an abnormal extent into the 
sphere of business, opportunities cannot but arise for bring- 
ing exceptional temptations to bear on those who have fa- 
vours to dispense, and the atmosphere which surrounds the 
tempters and the tempted grows unhealthy. This has hap- 
pened from time to time in England and in the United 
States also. Their experience warrants the hope that when 
normal conditions return, and the air has cleared, the tempta- 
tions will be reduced and the larger issues of policy again 
become the chief occupations of legislatures. As the coun- 
try fills up and the class that is enlightened and thoughtful 
grows large enough to make national opinion a more vigi- 



506 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : CANADA pabt n 

lantly effective force, the tone of public life may rise, as it 
rose in England after the middle of the eighteenth century 
and in the United States after 18S0. There are already 
signs of a keener sensitiveness and a stronger reforming pur- 
pose in the general body of the citizens. 

The political faults visible in new countries may be dis- 
appointing, but they are more curable than those of old 
countries, so historians note with a graver concern symptoms 
of decline in European peoples to which the world had 
looked to as patterns of wisdom or honour. Yet these also 
may be due to the sudden advent of new conditions bringing 
dangers hitherto unsuspected, and these, too, may pass away 
as one generation succeeds another. A young country like 
Canada must be expected to have some of the weaknesses 
of adolescence as well as the splendid hopefulness and energy 
which make the strength of youth. The great thing after 
all by which popular government stands or falls must be 
the rightmindedness and intelligence of the people. These 
Canada has. 

Striking the balance bet ween what democracy has done 
for her and what it has failed to do, it must not be forgotten 
that the coexistence, not only in the Dominion as a whole 
but in several provinces, of two races differing in religion 
as well as in language, contained the menace of what might 
have become a real danger. Think of Ireland! Canada 
has so far avoided that danger by the elastic nature of her 
institutions and the patriotic prudence of her statesmen. 
To those who have been watching the wild and wayward 
excesses to which the passion of nationality has been run- 
ning in Europe, this will seem no small achievement, no 
small witness to the wisdom of the Canadian people and the 
spirit of mutual consideration and good feeling which the 
practice of free self-government can form. As the other 
general lessons which a political philosopher may draw from 
the history of democracy in Canada have been already indi- 
cated, one only seems to need further enforcement. It is 
drawn from a comparison of the experience of the United 
States. The Canadian Constitution was an adaptation of 
the British Constitution to the circumstances of a new coun- 
try in which a Federal and not a unitary government was 
needed. It reproduced, with variations, certain features of 



chap, xxxvii PKOBABLE CHANGES 507 

the United States Federal system which experience had ap- 
proved, while seeking to avoid the defects that experience 
had disclosed. It followed in other points the parliamentary 
and Cabinet system of Britain ; and — what was no less im- 
portant — it carried over into Canada the habits and tradi- 
tions by which that parliamentary system had thriven. 
Hardly anything in it is traceable to any abstract theory. 
The United States Constitution was also created partly on 
the ancient and honoured principles of the English Common 
Law, and partly on the lines of the self-governing institu- 
tions which had worked well in the North American Colonies 
before their separation from the Mother Country. 1 But 
both the Federal Constitution and those of the several States 
of the Union were also largely affected, if not in spirit yet 
in form, by abstract conceptions, especially by the dogmas 
of Popular Sovereignty and of the so-called tl Separation 
of Powers." 2 Experience has shown that those constitu- 
tional provisions in which the influence of these doctrines 
went furthest are those whose working has proved least sat- 
isfactory, both in the National and in the State Govern- 
ments. 3 Here, as elsewhere, history teaches that it is safer 
to build on the foundations of experience and tradition than 
upon abstract principles, not that the abstract principles can 
be ignored — far from it — but because it is seldom pos- 
sible to predict what results they will give when applied 
under new conditions. Philosophy is no doubt the guide of 
life. But political philosophy is itself drawn from the ob- 
servation of actual phenomena, and the precepts it gives are 
not equally and similarly applicable everywhere: if they 
are to succeed in practice they must be adjusted to the facts 
of each particular case. 

This suggests the remark that the experience of Canada 
has been short. Only half a century has elapsed since the 

i Visitors to Canada are apt to be misled by the external resem- 
blances to the United States, in such things as the aspect of the 
streets, the hotels, the newspapers, the railway cars, the currency, 
into supposing the people to have been more affected by influences 
from their southern neighbours than is really the case. In character 
and in political habits there are marked differences. 

2 This subject will be more fully explained and discussed in the 
chapters on the United States. 

8 Such as frequent elections, short terms of office, the election of 
judges by the people, the relations of Congress to the President. 



508 ACTUAL DEMOCRACIES : CANADA part ii 

Federal system of the Dominion was set to work. Since 
then the country has been developing and population has 
been growing at an increasing rate of speed. Though im- 
migration is not likely to change the beliefs and tendencies 
of the inhabitants, and though the proportions of the French- 
speaking and English-speaking elements appear likely to re- 
main for some time the same as they now are, so too the 
preponderance of the rural population over the urban, of 
the agricultural over the manufacturing, though it will 
diminish with time, as it is already diminishing, will ap- 
parently remain because depending on the conditions Nature 
has created. Neither is there any present prospect that in- 
stitutions which have gained the general approval of the 
people will be fundamentally changed. But as economic 
problems arise, threatening internal strife and as intellectual 
movements are propagated from one nation to another, new 
ideas inspire new political aspirations and find their ex- 
pression in politics. This much may be said: Canada is 
well prepared by the character of her people, by their intel- 
ligence and their law-abiding habits, to face whatever prob- 
lems the future may bring, finding remedies for such defects 
as have disclosed themselves in her government, and making 
her material prosperity the basis of a pacific and enlightened 
civilization. 



END OF VOL. I 



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